Recently, SIPO released major IP statistics for 2017.

It shows that in 2017, there were 1.382 million invention patent applications, an increase of 14.2%. A total of 420,000 invention patents were granted, of which 327,000 were domestic invention patents with an increase of 8.2% over the same period of last year. By the end of 2017, the total number of invention patents in China (excluding Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) totaled 1.356 million. 

In 2017, the top 10 enterprises with the most granted invention patents (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) are China State Grid Corporation (3622 pieces), Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (3293 pieces), China Petrochemical Corporation (2567 pieces), BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd. (1845 pieces), ZTE Corporation (1699 pieces), Lenovo (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (1454 pieces), Zhuhai Gree Electric Appliances Co., Ltd. (1273 pieces), Guangdong Opal Mobile Communications Co., Ltd. (1222 pieces), PetroChina Company Limited (1008 pieces) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (862 pieces).

During 2017, SIPO received 51,000 PCT applications, an increase of 12.5%. Among them, 48,000 are from domestic applicants, an increase of 12.5%. There are seven provinces (incl. autonomous regions and municipalities) with over 1,000 PCT applications, which are Guangdong (268,000), Beijing (5,100), Jiangsu (4,600), Shanghai (2,100), Shandong (1,700), Zhejiang (1,400) and Hubei (1,300). The above-mentioned seven provinces and municipalities account for more than 90% of the domestic PCT applications.

The data also shows that in 2017, 5608 Chinese patent applications were published in the Belt and Road countries / regions (excluding China), an increase of 16.0%, while 4,319 patent applications from Belt and Road countries / regions were filed in China, an increase of 16.8%. The number of countries applying for patents in China reached 41, an increase of 4 over 2016. In addition, SIPO also released the data such as of the nationwide patent administrative enforcement cases, patent pledged financing, patent review requests and invalidation claim cases, as well as the data concerning patent agencies. (Source: sipo.gov.cn)