A few days ago, the China National State Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) has conducted a survey on the development of China's intellectual property service industry and released the 2021 Survey Report of National Intellectual Property Service Industry. By the end of 2020, about 865,000 people were employed in intellectual property services, rising 5.6 percent compared with that in 2019. The total number of facilitating agencies reached 73,000 with a year-on-year growth of 9.3%, among which more than 9,500 agencies were newly founded. In general, the scale of China's intellectual property service industry keeps expanding and the number of practitioners keeps growing, indicating the IP industry has been gathering its momentum.

  The report analyzes and summarizes the development situation of IP industry from eight respects, comprising the general information, professional facilitating agencies, practitioners, revenues, new industrial types, service mode, and market environment. Among these, it’s easy to find out that the industry is a new one with vigorous development, especially considering the distribution of service agencies and the education background of practitioners.

  According to survey, more than 60 percent of IP service agencies are located in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and Chengdu-Chongqing region, among which, almost 30% of the 19,000 IP facilitating agencies established within two years are grouped in the Yangtze River Delta, fully demonstrating the strong demand for IP services in economically active areas and the strong entrepreneurial energy of IP services in this region.

  As to the education background of practitioners, according to the survey, by the end of 2020, 75.4 percent of employees concerned with IP had a bachelor's degree at least. In terms of licensed patent agents, 41.0% of them had a master's degree or above, and 53.5% of them have a bachelor's degree, totaling accounting for 94.5%. These numbers are enough to prove that the overall educational background structure of IP industry is better than that of other industries.

  In addition, the survey also followed the hotspot of COVID-19, ascertaining the development condition of the IP industry in this special time. According to the survey, the epidemic has had a certain impact on IP service agencies in many respects, such as income, expanding services, working efficiency, and communication with clients. Although today a lot of intellectual property services can be handled through the Internet, the role of face-to-face service in communication and improving working efficiency is still difficult to be replaced.

The full report can refer to:

https://www.cnipa.gov.cn/module/download/down.jsp?i_ID=172507&colID=88