Jiangsu Province topped in the country in 2012 in terms of filings and grants of patents, filings of invention patents and patents granted to enterprises, making initial progress towards the goal of developing Jiangsu into a robust IP province, reported from a provincial conference for IP Office directors on March 7.

During last year when the province just started to pursue the goal on IP capacity building, changes and achievements were seen in various aspects, said Zhu Yu, Director of Jiangsu Provincial IP Office in his working report at the meeting. The indicator of patents owned by per ten thousand people was incorporated into the performance evaluation system of governments at all levels; implementation of the provincial IP strategy was deepened, with 22 cooperation projects successfully concluded and specific opinions on formulating and implementing IP strategies issued in 13 cities and more than 70 counties.

2012 also saw a stable improvement of Jiangsu’s comprehensive ability in patent creation. Patent filings and grants hit 472,656 and 269,944 in the province last year, up 35.67% and 35.10% on a year-on-year basis, accounting for 24.72% and 23.21% respectively of the gross total in the country.

Regarding patents for invention, 110,091 filings and 16,242 grants were recorded, with Nanjing, Suzhou and Wuxi ranking among the top ten cities for getting most such grants in China.

Invention patents in force reached 45,238, ranking third nationwide, equal to 5.73 patents held by every ten thousand residents.

The achievements above were actually to a large extent contributed by enterprises, whose patent filings submitted and grants received both took up more than 60% of the provincial total. As many as 17,482 businesses have filed patent applications, where 26 companies submitted over 500 annually, and 3 companies filed more than 1,000 patent applications each year.

In the next stage, high-tech, large and medium sized and industrial leading enterprises should further enhance capacity building to develop more self-owned patents, said Xu Nanping, head of the provincial Science Department, who particularly stressed on the importance of intellectual properties by comparing it to a "lifeline" in business and even broader national development.

(Source:IPR in China)