8 questions on this page: Filing and grant · Fees. The answers come from verified content elsewhere on this site; the link at the end of each answer takes you to the original page for context. For statutory wording and official fees, the official documents prevail.
It protects the shape or structure of a product. There is no substantive examination, so it is granted in months rather than years; the official fee is CNY 500 rather than CNY 3,400; and it is fully enforceable. The reason to want one is speed: in a market where competitors may file utility models on everything, a pending invention application is not yet a right you can assert.
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Yes—either by claiming Paris Convention priority (within twelve months of the first filing) or through the PCT national phase (within thirty months of the earliest priority date). Which one depends on how many countries you are entering and when you need the Chinese right in hand.
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Yes. The Patent Law imposes the same requirement as the Trademark Law on applicants with no habitual residence or place of business in China. A note on citations: since the 2020 amendment this is Article 18—it was Article 19 in the 2008 text, and a great deal of English-language material still cites the old number.
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Invention patents go through substantive examination and are typically granted in one to three years. Utility models skip substantive examination and are granted in about 6–14 months; designs in about 4–6 months. That speed gap is a strategy, not a footnote—see the note above on filing an invention patent and a utility model for the same invention on the same day.
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Annuities fall due every year for the life of the right, and missing a single payment means the right lapses. We docket the deadlines, pay on your behalf and warn you ahead of the years when the fee steps up—that is the “annuity management” line in the table above.
Read more: Patent filing in China
Invention: CNY 900 filing fee plus CNY 2,500 for substantive examination. Utility model: CNY 500. Design: CNY 500. After that, annuities run for the life of the right—which is where the real cost of a Chinese patent portfolio lies. Annuity schedule →
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We don't know, and we won't pretend to. The Measures do not expressly exclude foreign applicants. But the evidence they require—a Chinese enterprise income tax return, or an income certificate from the applicant's Chinese employer—assumes the applicant is inside China's tax system. We have found no official statement that settles the point. Sources that confidently tell you foreign applicants qualify have, in our judgment, confused paying official fees with qualifying for reduced official fees.
Read more: What CNIPA official fees really cost
No. The patent registration fee, the publication printing fee at the grant stage, the bibliographic data change fee for changing patent agency, and the PCT transmittal fee were all abolished from 2018-08-01 by CNIPA Announcement No. 272. Any price list that still shows them is out of date.
Read more: What CNIPA official fees really cost
