On June 25, 2024, China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) held a press conference mainly focusing on intellectual property personnel statistics. Some data points from the press conference include: there are 76,000 people that are qualified to practice patent law and 34,000 of them are active practicing patent agents (compared to 51,807 active U.S. patent practitioners); there are 860,000 intellectual property personnel overall in China; and CNIPA has 18,000 patent and trademark examiners. In contrast, the USPTO has over 8,500 patent examiners and over 700 trademark examiners as of fiscal year 2022.

Other data points of note include:

• the number of administrative management and law enforcement personnel exceeds 30,000;
• more than 30 colleges and universities across China offer or applied to offer intellectual property degrees;
• CNIPA has trained 837 foreign personnel;
• the number of newly registered users of the China Intellectual Property Distance Education Platform has exceeded 659,000, and 4.4 million people have been trained. 

A full transcript of the press conference can be found here (Chinese only).