On March 26, 2025, China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) released its 2025 budget (国家知识产权局2025年部门预算) listing performance targets. Some 2025 targets include:
- receiving over 5.135 million invention and utility model patent applications;
- lowering the examination period for invention patents to 15 months or less;
- examining 2.026 million invention patent applications;
- 4,500 or more people will pass the patent agent qualification examination;
- examining 5.97 million trademark applications; and
- the average examination period for trademark registration will be 4 months or less.
In contrast, in the 2024 Budget, CNIPA expected to examine over 2.026 million patent applications with an examination period of less than 16 months and total new applications (including invention and utility model applications) was expected to be equal or greater than 4.79 million applications. As 1,044,777 invention patents were granted in 2024, that implies only a 51.6% grant rate for invention patents in 2024 (although the number of examined invention patent applications could be higher, implying a lower grant rate). Examination might be getting even tougher as Chinese statistics showed that the number of invention patents granted in the first two months of 2025 were down some 15%.
The full text is available here (Chinese only).