The “Measures for the Administration of the Prioritized Examination of Patents” enforced by the China National Intellectual Property Administration on August 1, 2017 is a further improvement of the “Measures for the Administration of Prioritized Examination of Invention Patent applications” of August 2012. The 2017“Measures” not only stipulates the prioritized examination of invention patent applications in the substantive examination stage, but also involves utility model applications and design patent applications, as well as patent reexamination cases and patent invalidation cases, forming a systematic and complete patent prioritized examination system. As can be seen from the annual report of the China National Intellectual Property Administration, the number of prioritized examination cases involving inventions in China has increased significantly over the recent years. The number of prioritized examination cases for invention applications in 2021 has reached 74,000, an increase of 32% over 2020.
[Chinese patent applications under prioritized examination]
At present, from the date of approval of the request for prioritized examination, an invention patent application is granted or rejected within one year, a patent reexamination case concludes within seven months, and a patent invention invalidation case concludes within five months.
It should be noted that, in the Beijing Intellectual Property Office and the Shenzhen Intellectual Property Office, the prioritized examination of Chinese invention applications of overseas applicants should be requested by local patent agencies in Beijing or Shenzhen, otherwise the request will not be accepted.
In addition, it should also be noted that the total number of prioritized examination for patent applications, patent reexamination cases and invalidation cases is determined by the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) based on the examination capacity of different specialized technical areas, the number of patents granted in the previous year, the number of to-be-examined cases in the current year, and etc.
Source:https://www.cnipa.gov.cn/col/col94/index.html