The largest 25 patent prosecution firms in China prosecuted 18% of the total patent filings for 2019 through 2023. That’s nearly 240,000 applications prosecuted from 2019-2023.

It’s no surprise that the top three firms, UNITALEN ATTORNEYS AT LAW, CHOFIN IP, and SCIHEAD IP GROUP, have increased their application filings from an average of 25,000 per year to an average of 36,000 per year over the five-year period.

Unsurprisingly, it has remained consistent that China as a jurisdiction is still highly focused on domestic filings – with only 3 applicants inside the top 50 filing in China originating from other countries (up 1 from the 2018-2022 period).

Within the top 25 largest patent prosecution firms, only CCPIT PATENT AND TRADEMARK LAW OFFICE, CHINA PATENT AGENT (H.K.) LTD. and LIU, SHEN & ASSOCIATES – prosecuted more filings originating from foreign applicants than domestic applicants. On the flip side in the same top 25, we see BEIJING SHENGFANZHIRONG INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AGENCY CO. LTD., BEIJING WEIZHENG PATENT AGENCY CO., BEIJING KEJIA INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY FIRM, BEIJING CHEMICAL EDUCATION INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AGENCY CO., LTD., and BEIJING UTC LIANFENG INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW OFFICE (GENERAL PARTNERSHIP), who have 100% of their portfolio filings from domestic applicants.

IP Pilot data suggests that international applicants are starting to gain traction in seeing China as a strategic filing jurisdiction in their filing strategies. Most applicants are few key innovators filing from the United States, South Korea and Japan. These innovators include Japanese SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO LTD, Cayman ALIBABA GROUP HOLDING LTD, American QUALCOMM INC and Japanese TOYOTA MOTOR CO LTD.

From 2019 to 2023, patent prosecution firms in China sent over 350,000 patent applications to their foreign associates. The top 5 countries receiving from China are the United States, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan – over 71% of sent cases were received by these countries.

IP Pilot data also shows that China received 526,514 cases from 91 countries. Naturally, the same 5 countries were the top 5 in sending cases to China, with Japan taking out top spot, with over 35% of the sent filings originating from Japan.

There are a few key patent prosecution firms in China that the largest foreign applicants and firms chose to represent them locally, including LIU, SHEN & ASSOCIATES, NTD PATENT & TRADEMARK AGENCY, SHANGHAI PATENT & TRADEMARK LAW OFFICE LLC, CCPIT PATENT AND TRADEMARK LAW OFFICE, and UNITALEN ATTORNEYS AT LAW.