The WIPO recently released a report showing that the number of international patent applications filed through it continued to grow in 2020; China and the United States led the application volume and both achived annual growth.

Despite the impact of the pandemic and global GDP is expected to decrease by 3.5% in 2020, the number of PCT patent applications filed through the WIPO increased by 4% to 275,900, the highest number of applications ever.

China once again is the country with the largest number of applications hitting 68,720, up 16.1% over last year. The United States and Japan ranked second and third with 59,230 and 50,520 applications respectively, followed by South Korea and Germany. The number of PCT applications filed by Asian countries accounted for 53.7% of the total, compared with 35.7% 10 years ago.

In 2020, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. became the largest applicant for the fourth consecutive year with 5,464 PCT applications. In the second place are South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Japan's Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, South Korea's LG Electronics Co., and the United States Qualcomm.

Among educational institutions, the University of California continued to top the list with 559 applications, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranked second with 269 applications. This is followed by Shenzhen University, Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University in China. Of the top 10 universities on the list, 5 are from China, 4 from the United States, and 1 from Japan.

In terms of trademark, the United States is still the country with the largest number of applications using the WIPO Madrid system in 2020, with 10,005 applanations, followed by Germany, China, France and the United Kingdom. Among the top 10, China is the only country that recorded double-digit growth in 2020, an increase of 16.4%.

(Source: CHINA Official WeChat Account)

According to the 2020 patent data released by the European Patent Office (EPO) on the 16th, the European Patent Office received 13,432 patent applications from China in 2020, up 9.9%, the highet growth among the major patent application countries.

The EPO received 180,250 patent applications in 2020, slightly lower than 181,532, the number of patent applications in 2019. Chinese patent applications have risen against the trend. The top three technical fields filed by Chinese applicants are "digital communications", "computer technology" and "electric machinery, equipment, and energy", China's digital communications patent applications account for 26.5% of the total applications received by the EPO. Also, China is with the fastest growth in the fields of biotechnology, organic fine chemistry, and medical technology.

In the company rankings, Huawei last year had filed 3,113 patent applications, second only to Samsung.

(source:Peoples Network)

As announced by the Patent Office of CNIPA and Eurasian Patent Office (EPAO), the China-Eurasian Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot project will be extended for one year from April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022. The relevant requirements and procedures for submitting PPH requests with the two offices remain unchanged.

The China-Eurasian PPH pilot program was launched on April 1, 2018 and should had expired on March 31, 2021 before the extension.

(Source: CNIPA website)

Case Summary：

In 2015, our client Ping-An-Ye Group filed with the Trademark Office for reexamination of revoking No. 3382610 “赛林娜” trademark (hereinafter referred to as the “disputed trademark”) due to three consecutive years of non-use, which was supported by the then Trademark Review and Adjudication Board (TRAB) with the decision to revoke the disputed trademark (hereinafter referred to as the “disputed decision”). In disagreement with the decision, the owner of the disputed trademark initiated a litigation with the Beijing IP Court and supplemented relevant evidence to prove the existence and use of the disputed trademark. After hearing, the Beijing IP Court held that the evidence submitted can prove that the disputed trademark has been applied in authentic and effective commercial use within the specified period and supported the claim made by the plaintiff. Our client dissatisfied with the judgment of first-instance and appealed to the Beijing Higher People's Court. After trial, the court of second-instance issued the judgement to maintain that of first-instance. In refusal to the above result, our client applied to the Supreme People's Court for a retrial.

At the retrial, Unitalen lawyers put emphasis on the debate of the core of such trademark revocation disputes: in examination of whether the evidence can prove that the disputed trademark has been continuously used in the designated goods and services during the specified period, it shall take into consideration of the purpose of use (good faith or malicious), the use itself (authentic use, symbolic use or even false use), and the consequences of use (causing differentiation or confusion in the market) as a whole. The illegal use that is only symbolic and occasional does not conform to the legislative purpose of the provisions in Item 4 of Article 44 of the Trademark Law of 2001 concerning trademark use. Our lawyers also provided analysis on the evidence submitted in the trials of first instance and second instance and presented defense reasons against one by one.

After retrial, the Supreme People’s Court issued the ruling that adopted the above-mentioned propositions made by our lawyers and supported our client’s retrial appeal, that is, the judgement of first and second instance were revoked. And the disputed decision was upheld.

Typical Significance:

One of the main considerations in examination and determination of the evidence of trademark use adopted by the Supreme People’s Court is if the trademark owner uses own trademark and other’s trademark concurrently with intention to obscure the the independence of or implies specific relevance of the two trademarks and thus take advantage of the publicity of other’s trademark, then it’s not a use that conforms to the provisions of the Trademark Law. If the use of a trademark is likely to cause the relevant public confuse or misidentify the source of the disputed trademark, and if the use of a trademark actively seeks the result of mark confusion, it will not produce a statutory trademark use effect.

This case thus provides typical significance for the essentials of trademark use for similar cases; also it provides reference in respective of litigation strategy in how to actively pursue the existing judicial remedy procedures for appeals for similar cases.

Recently, we received a thank you letter from our client Zhejiang Zhaodi Group for the timely accomplishment of the high quality and efficient patent layout designed for our client’s new generation mechanical connectors and special-shaped precast piles, which tackles the difficult issues surrounding the concrete precast component industry such as difficulty in preserving technical confidentiality and obtaining evidence for patent infringement. Our client praised us for the significant contribution to their seizing market opportunities for the new products.

On the evening of April 17, at the 11th China IP New Year Forum and 2021 China IP Managers Annual Meeting Award Ceremony hosted by China IP Magazine was held in Beijing. Unitalen was awarded as “China Outstanding IP Service Team” again by virtue of our high-quality service and excellent business capabilities.