Fu Zhenlin, head of an agricultural mechanics facility in Heihe, Heilongjiang province, displays his mechanical dog sled earlier this month. The gasoline-engine-powered robot, which can haul up to 200 kilograms of cargo, has been granted a patent.Qiuqilong/ Forchinadaily

China now faster than US, Europe but slightly lags Japan, South Korea

China's intellectual property authority is making an effort to shorten the review time for patent applications, a senior official said on Tuesday.

"Last year, the average review time for a patent application in China was reduced to about 22 months, faster than the United States and the European Patent Office, and slightly slower than Japan and South Korea," said Shen Changyu, head of the State Intellectual Property Office, during a State Council news briefing.

Wednesday is World Intellectual Property Day.

The office aims to provide efficient review services to applicants, Shen said. Reviews on average took at least 25 months between 2006 and 2010. That was reduced to at least 22 months between 2011 and 2015 and then to no more than 22 months in 2016.

In the US, review time is more than 25 months on average, and at the European Patent Office it's 26 months.

To shorten review time, the Chinese patent office has taken steps including increasing the number of patent reviewers.

The office "has 11,000 patent reviewers - the biggest IP office in the world", Shen said. "This is how we have kept an efficient review system as the number of patent applications have grown rapidly."

The office has also adopted new models, such as collective review, to keep review time under control, Shen said.

Expedited handling is available for patent applications related to State interests and core technology. Those applications can be reviewed in eight months.

China had nearly 3.5 million patent applications last year, up by 23.8 percent year-on-year. Among them, patent applications for inventions increased by 21.5 percent year-on-year to 1.34 million.

The number of Chinese international patent applications filed under the World Intellectual Property Organization's Patent Cooperation Treaty reached 40,000 last year.

Also last year, China set a record for copyrights, processing more than 2 million registrations, a rise of 22.3 percent compared with 2015, said Yu Cike, head of the copyright management department of the National Copyright Administration of China.

Nearly 1.6 million registrations were publications including literary works and photographs, while 407,774 were software, he said.

The number of software copyright registrations has increased about 40 percent since 2015. More than 80 percent of the software works were registered in Beijing, Shanghai and 10 cities in Guangdong province.

China's copyright registrations have seen a steady, rapid rise. The number has increased about fourfold since 2011, with 570,000.

In 2013, China's copyright registrations hit what was then a record 1 million.

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