In the year of 2015, the Patent Reexamination Board (i.e. the PRB) spared no effort to improve the quality control for patent reexamination and patent invalidation through multiple ways. It performed its functions in an all-round way, made great contribution to the effective running of the Chinese patent system as well as the economic and social development.

In 2015, PRB has received about 16,000 patent reexamination cases and patent invalidation cases in total, among which 12,000 were patent reexamination cases and 3,724 were patent invalidation cases. The quantity of the patent invalidation cases maintained a stable increase since the “Twelfth Five Year Plan”, up 9% year on year.                                       

Also in 2015, totally 29,000 patent reexamination and invalidation cases were concluded, up 27% year on year, with patent reexamination cases accounted for 25,000, up 26% and invalidation cases 3,652, up 33% year on year. What worth to be mentioned is that the quantity of patent reexamination cases concluded is larger than that of the received patent reexamination cases for the first time, and the pending patent reexamination cases had decreased significantly.

The average pendency for patent reexamination cases was dropped from 14.6 months in 2014 to 12.3 months by the end of 2015 and that of the patent invalidation cases was dropped from 7.2 months in 2014 to 5.4 months by the end of 2015.

In the year of 2016, PRB will make thorough research on the positioning of the patent reexamination and invalidation proceedings and further optimize and improve the patent reexamination and invalidation systems. Further, PRB will continue the efforts in cutting down the pendency of patent reexamination and invalidation cases by improving examination efficiency. Finally, PRB will collect typical cases regarding patent reexamination and invalidation so as to unify the examination criteria within the Board and with those of the State Intellectual Property Office of China.