Patent examination at the State Intellectual Property Office in China

Johannes Liegsalz and Stefan Wagner
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Johannes Liegsalz: BMW AG

No ESMT-11-06, ESMT Research Working Papers from ESMT European School of Management and Technology

Abstract: The number of patent applications filed at the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office SIPO grew tremendously over the last decades and the SIPO has become the world’s third largest patent office by 2009. In this paper, we provide an overview of the institutional background of patent examination in China. Moreover, we empirically analyze the determinants of the grant lags applicants have to expect at the SIPO. The multivariate duration analysis is based on the population of 443,533 patent applications filed at the SIPO between 1990 and 2002. The average grant lag is 4.71 years with considerable variation across 30 different technology areas. Interestingly, we find that Chinese applicants are able to achieve faster patent grants than their non-Chinese counterparts (even after controlling for various other determinants of grant lags). This might be an indication of a differential treatment of Chinese applicants which would be in violation of Art. 3 (National Treatment) and Art. 4 (Most-favored Nation Treatment) of TRIPS that has been signed by China in 2001.

Keywords: patent system; patent examination; State Intellectual Property Office China; duration analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2011-05-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Research Policy 42(2): 552–563

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http://static.esmt.org/publications/workingpapers/ESMT-11-06.pdf First version, 2011 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Patent examination at the State Intellectual Property Office in China (2013)
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