Aggressive patenting in China.

Chinese New Year holidays came and gone. Busy as hell.

I was doing some search as a background search on an invention patent. I am working on a leisure product which is not common in China until in the past 2 or 3 years, so I don't expected a lot of patent in this area from domestic inventor.

I was wrong.

I found there were quite a large number of Invention or Utility Modle Patent from domestic inventors / applicants, with filing date in or around 2003. Now it is four years after these patents were published but not granted. I also noticed that these patents represent design of a part of the product. I can say that it would be a challenge to get granted, given our knowledge of this product our clients and their competitors make.

Is this aggressive patenting or even patent squattering?

So regardless of whether you sell to China now, if you or your competitor manufacture in China, do get IP protection in China.