The China National Intellectual Property Administration released their statistics for January through April 2020 on May 20, 2020 showing a continued post-virus boom in patent filings versus 2019 after a drop at the February coronavirus peak in China.  There was an almost 8% increase in invention patent filings in April 2020 versus April 2019 with 106,270 invention patent applications filed this April 2020 versus 98,529 last April 2019. Cumulative 2020 invention patent filings are almost even with 2019 with 434,682 in 2020 versus 439,271 at this time last year. 

Utility models also continued their upswing with an amazing 77% increase in utility model filings in April 2020 versus April 2019.  There were approximately 200,000 utility model filing in April 2020 versus about 113,000 in April 2019. Cumulative numbers show Chinese utility model filings in 2020 now exceed 2019’s filings at this time. About 764,000 versus 661,000 last year at this time.  However, this upward trend may slow due to the ending up of incentives for utility model filings announced last week in the Plan for Further Implementation of the National Intellectual Property Strategy to Accelerate the Construction of an Intellectual Property Power Country by 2020. 

Other filing statistics released include: about 185,000 design patents were filed cumulatively from January to April 2020; approximately 18,500 PCT international applications were filed cumulatively; and roughly 2.471 million trademark applications were filed.