Top Patenting Companies in China

Posted on April 9, 2010 by IP

The IP.com Global Patent Search has added patents and applications from the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Chinese with images as well as English translations. Click on the links below to view examples of patent documents in Chinese and English translations

For the People's Republic of China (PRC) patent collections, IP.com obtains primary data from SIPO. The website of the State Intellectual Property Office of the PRC is online in English here, where there are answers to many frequently asked questions about Chinese patent laws and regulations, such as:

How many types of industrial property rights exist in China?
What is the duration of Chinese patent?
What kind of invention cannot be patented in China?
Can computer software be patented in China?

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IP.com Opens Its Asia Pacific Office

Posted on May 3, 2009 by Thomas J. Colson

As CEO of IP.com it gives me great pleasure to announce the opening of IP.com's Asia Pacific office in Hong Kong, SAR, China to expand and better service our rapidly growing Asia and Asia Pacific clients. Hong Kong has been selected due to its ideal location and solid legal infrastructure for international commerce.

The Asia Pacific region, especially China, is undergoing massive changes in all aspects of economic might, including the cornerstone of Intellectual Property (IP) governance. China and the greater region are making great contributions to innovation and development of new technology to better humanity worldwide.

The nation’s innovation and intellectual property mandate has become the centerpiece of discussions at conferences and in boardrooms throughout China. The Chinese commitment to building infrastructure for innovation is as deep as its commitment to building roads, bridges, and skyscrapers. And to see the depth of that commitment, one needs only to spend a day in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, or any other Chinese city. At IP.com, we are more than pleased to be working with Chinese business and government leaders in building this infrastructure.

IP.com landed in China more than three years ago, and we have been on the ground there almost every day since. We have worked with law firms, universities, businesses, and the Chinese government, and we look forward to growing our Chinese presence and involvement. At the beginning of this year, we relocated our EVP, Asia Pacific, Johnson Kong, to China. This will be of great value not only to IP.com, but to me personally, as I will be spending 25% of 2009 in China…now I will have a place to call my own…or my home away from home.

On a personal note, not only am I placing an IP.com bet on China, but for the past two years I have been placing a family bet on China as well. Two years ago, I started learning Mandarin with my three daughters, and we continue with our Chinese studies together as a family activity almost every evening. So, we're pleased to express our best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year for our many friends throughout China.

Gōng Xǐ Fā Cái.

The IP.com Hong Kong Office is located within driving distance from Shenzhen, a ferry distance to Macau, and a short flight to Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Shanghai and Beijing are also easily accessible from the IP.com Hong Kong office.

Johnson Kong, Executive Vice President and Head of Asia Pacific, has graciously taken on the personal challenge of relocating his family on our behalf. Mr. Kong is passionate and committed to our Chinese and Asia Pacific business growth initiatives.

IP.com is in the business of providing software and services for innovation management. In his current role, Mr. Kong assists clients in creating and implementing innovation management and intellectual property strategies to advance business goals. He has held several positions from sales & marketing to executive management with leading industries across Asia Pacific, and has become an expert in the creation and implementation of innovation management and intellectual property strategies. Mr. Kong has invented software and business methods associated with the analysis and management of intellectual property.

The new Asia Pacific office of IP.com is located at:

One Harbour View Street
1 IFC
33 Floor, Suite 16
Central
Hong Kong, SAR, China
T: 852-3960-6391
F: 852-2166-8999

For more information, call our US headquarters at 1-716-362-4562 or visit ip.com. You can read our company blog, Securing Innovation, where we write about Intellectual Property, not only in English but also in Chinese on matters of interest to our readers in China. You can read, in Chinese, some of the posts by Johnson Kong if you click on this link.

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China: Defensive Publishing could be just what Chinese companies need

Posted on October 8, 2007 by Thomas J. Colson
It appears that China is facing a huge obstacle on matters of intellectual property, namely patents. More specifically, China is way behind in the patent race; not only worldwide, but even at home. If you just looked at a snapshot today, it’s hard to see why. Consider this:

  • China has the largest population in the world.
  • The Chinese educational system is heavily oriented toward science-based technical training.
  • China graduates in excess of three times more engineers - electrical, industrial, bio-chemical, semiconductor, mechanical, even power generation - with bachelor's degrees than the U.S. university system.
  • China consistently has graduated more engineers than the U.S., Japan, and Germany combined every year since 1997
  • In terms of the size of their economy, China is on pace to overtake Germany in the next four years, Japan by 2015 and the U.S. by 2039

Yet, while the rate of patenting is increasing in China, on a worldwide bases, China is still way, way behind the US, Japan, Germany, France, the UK, South Korea, Italy, and Canada. China is actually patenting at an annual rate of less than 5% of the US. In fact, many individual Japanese and US companies themselves patent more than the entire nation of China on an annual basis. Worse yet, many of the above mentioned countries are exceeding Chinese patents in their own backyard; the Chinese Patent Office.
This is a seemingly impossible position for China. Every day China gets farther and farther behind in the patent race, and deeper and deeper into the hole of being a labor based nation rather than an intellectual property based nation.

However if history holds true, and China follows the teachings of its great strategy masters, China will find a path of low resistance whereby it can negate those patent positions.

For starters, China may turn the idea of what a patent is around and show that the patent is a tool for use by the weak, not the strong. For companies in more fully developed nations, patents are a necessary part of their IP strategy since their cost of invention is so high. The company that invests millions of dollars to create an inventive product must generate millions of dollars in sales just to break-even. If that inventive product is easy to copy, patents might be the only way to keep copiers out; copiers that of course did not have to invest millions in R&D to produce the inventive products. A copier is at break-even from the beginning. So, in a world without patents, who would prevail? The companies or countries with the greatest capabilities to conduct R&D and ultimately build products inexpensively. Companies or countries that wouldn’t be as financially devastated by copy-cats. Since China has low labor costs coupled with a highly educated labor pool, its companies c an invent and build more cost efficiently than companies from almost any other nation. The only thing keeping them from doing that is patents. This means that it is in China’s best interest not to compete in the patent race, but to stop the patent race.

China can do this with defensive publications. With an army of engineers graduating from its universities at home and abroad, China has the means to disrupt the patent fortresses of patent savvy companies. Its engineers can develop and defensively publish innovation for a small fraction of the cost of patenting and stop the patent race dead in its tracks…or at least slow it down a little.
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