By Stephen Yang,
Peksung Intellectual Property Ltd.

In 2008, 828,328 patent applications were filed in China, a 19.4 percent increase compared with 2007, and 411,982 patents were granted, a 17.1 percent increase compared with the year before.
Of the applications filed in 2008, 717,144 (86.6 percent) were filed by domestic applicants and 111,184 (13.4 percent) were filed by foreign applicants—a 22.3 percent and 3.5 percent increase respectively over 2007.
Of the domestic applications, 27.1 percent were invention applications;31.2 percent were utility model applications; and 41.6 percent were design applications. The applications from foreign applicants were mostly for invention patents, which accounted for 85.7 percent.
Up to the end of 2008, 4,853,506 patent applications had been filed in the history of Chinese patents, of which 83 percent were filed by domestic applicants and 17 percent by foreign applicants. Of the total applications,33.4 percent were for invention patents, 34.9 percent were for utility model patents and 31.7 percent were for design patents.

China moves up the PCT rankings
In 2008, China received 6,089 international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT)—11.9 percent more than in 2007. This means that China is now ranked number six in the world in terms of the number of international applications.
The number of PCT applications entering the national phase in China in 2008 was 57,421—3,701 (6.4 percent) more than in 2007.PCT filings from Chinese high-tech enterprises such as Huawei and ZTE have also increased. The two companies are now ranked first and 38th in terms of PCT filings.

Two important IP cases
The ‘Top Ten Typical Lawsuits’ of 2008 were elected by the public and several authorities, including the Supreme Court and the Supreme Procuratorate.
Of these 10 cases, two were IP lawsuits.
The first case involved the China Audio-Video Copyright Association (CAVCA),which filed lawsuits for copyright fees against more than 200 karaoke bar operators, at multiple courts in Beijing. The Beijing Dongcheng District People’s Court ruled that the defendant, a karaoke bar operator, provided an MTV-ondemand service to consumers without the permission of the rights holders and,as such, infringed copyright. The defendant was ordered to pay Rmb52,800 ($7,739) to CAVCA and delete the related MTV programmes from its systems.
It was the first time the CAVCA had claimed royalties from karaoke bar operators on behalf of music producers.

The second case involved almost one thousand people with Doctorates or Master’s degrees suing Beijing Wanfang Data for infringing their copyrights.
The plaintiffs alleged that Wanfang had illegally included their dissertations in its Wanfang’s China Dissertation Database, without the authorisation of the authors, and had profited from selling its system to libraries and offering online browsing and downloading services, all of which violated the plaintiffs’ copyright.
Rulings on some of the cases have been made, and Wanfang Data was ordered to pay the authors between Rmb2,300 and Rmb3,300 each.

Supreme Court rules on design cases
On December 25, 2008, the Supreme Court made a final ruling on a series of lawsuits concerning the validity of design patents owned by Falmer Investments.
Falmer had filed multiple applications for similar designs on the same product on two separate occasions and received design patents accordingly. Xinda Company filed a request for invalidation with the Patent Re-examination Board (PRB) on the grounds of double patenting the same design.
The PRB decided that “the same design” should be interpreted as identical or similar designs and that the related multiple design patents were invalidated.Falmer appealed to the Beijing High Court, which ruled that when the same applicant applies for two or more similar designs on the same day, “the same designs” should only be interpreted as identical designs and should not include similar designs. In addition, the Beijing High Court directly ruled that the design patents filed on the same day were valid.
The PRB and Xinda requested a retrial at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court held an open hearing and maintained the invalidation decision made by the PRB.
The Supreme Court held that, for the same invention-creations, only one patent right should be granted, as provided in Rule 13, paragraph 1 of the Implementation Regulations of the Patent Law. As to the same designs,whether the designs are identical or similar, and whether the designs are granted to the same applicant or not, only one patent right shall be granted.In addition, the Supreme Court negated the Beijing High Court’s action of directly ruling on validity of patent rights.