Survey shows China's improvement in patent transfers

BEIJING -- The industrialization transfer rate of China's effective patents in 2022 reached a five-year high of 36.7 percent, indicating that its intellectual property protection keeps supporting the innovative development of the economy, an annual survey said Wednesday.

Issued by the National Intellectual Property Administration (NIPA), the survey said the patent industrialization rate for enterprise patentees was 48.1 percent this year. Among them, enterprise investment from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan had the highest rate, followed by foreign-invested, private-domestic, and state-owned enterprises.

The proportion of patent holders affected by infringements dropped to 7.7 percent in 2022. It reached over 10 percent between 2016 and 2020 and peaked at 28.4 percent from 2011 to 2015.

"The decline indicated that patent infringement has been effectively curbed, and the country's IP protection has consistently improved," said Ge Shu, a senior NIPA official, at a monthly press conference.

Meanwhile, the proportion of Chinese enterprise patentees taking countermeasures against infringements was 72.7 percent. It has remained above 70 percent for the past four years.

The survey report was based on valid questionnaires of 18,000 patent holders.