China has thoroughly resolved the problem of trademark examination backlogs and the time it takes to process a trademark application has been reduced to less than a year from the previous three years when the expedited approach was not employed, said Fu Shuangjian, Deputy Director of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office on December 9.

As the national economy grows, the explosion of trademark applications has gone far beyond the processing capacity of SAIC, he said.

"In 2000, the trademark application volume in China was 223 thousand and only 187 thousand of them were examined –thus the trademark examination backlogs appeared. When it came to 2007, the backlogs had exceeded 1.8 million and the time it took to process a trademark application was more than three years, which aroused public complaints. " Fu said, before 2008, the volumes of trademark applications being examined were all below the numbers of applications received in the same year. It was not until 2008 that the historic change happened.

By December 9, 2010, the number of trademark applications received in China has reached 8.213 million, of which 5.545 million pieces of applications have been registered and 4.481 million pieces are valid, all ranking the top in the world.

(IPR in China )