2019 Annual Report Intellectual Property Office

II.IPR EXAMINATIONS AND SERVICES Current Status 01 Patent Examination As technologies continue to advance, the average first office action pendency for invention patents in 2019 was down to 8.4 months, which was outstanding efficiency. Invention Patent Examination Cases There were 42,987 requests for substantive examination of invention patent applications, 41,088 disposals, and 48,316 pending cases. Compared to 2018, requests for substantive examination of invention patent applications increased by 2.4%, disposals increased by 3.9%, and pending cases increased by 4.0%. Examination Results of Invention Patent Applications 38,382 41,991 42,987 40,124 Year Number Pending Number of Total Disposals Requests for Substantive Examination 2015 72,892 40,475 68,163 2016 50,293 38,382 61,287 2018 46,443 41,991 39,528 2019 48,316 42,987 41,088 2017 44,002 40,124 46.469 61,287 46,469 39,528 41,088 68,163 40,475 Number Pending Requests for Substantive Examination Number of Total Disposals Invention Patent Examination II. IPR EXAMINATIONS AND SERVICES TIPO spares no effort to provide high-quality examinations and services. In 2019, we managed to maintain reasonable first office action pendency for both invention patent and trademark. Apart from that, we created a new Patent Examination Quality Feedback webpage to seek public feedback. And for the first time we conducted a satisfaction survey on patent examination quality. In all, TIPO addressed key copyright issues and designated collection of joint royalty rates for karaoke machines. Item 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Allowance Cases 45,796 44,891 35,756 30,585 30,987 Percentage 67.2% 73.3% 76.9% 77.4% 75.4% Rejection Cases 20,796 14,782 9,741 8,063 9,144 Percentage 30.5% 24.1% 21.0% 20.4% 22.3% O t h e r s ( i n c l u d i n g withdrawals and not accepted) Cases 1,571 1,614 972 880 957 Percentage 2.3% 2.6% 2.1% 2.2% 2.3% Unit: Case, % Note:1.Percentage is derived from using the number of total disposals as the denominator and allowance, rejection, and others as the numerators. 2.Overall disposals include allowances, rejections, and others. 3.The number of examiners was down because of the expiry in April 2017 of five-year contracts for the 170 examiners, but we worked hard to balance between the numbers of disposals and requests for substantive examination. Year 2019 TIPOANNUAL REPORT 23