Evalueserve’s latest article analyzes the patent infringement lawsuit filed by The Chint Group against Schneider Electric in China.

It was recently announced that French company Schneider Electric settled a three-year old patent litigation with Chint, one of the largest manufacturers of low-voltage devices in China. The settlement amount of CNY 157.5 million (about USD 23 million) paid by Schneider is believed to be the largest sum ever paid at a patent litigation settlement in China.

Is this settlement a one-off occurrence or is this the start of a new trend? If recent patent statistics are an indication, then this may be indeed a new - and potentially lasting - trend in China.

In 2008, a total of 828,328 patent applications were filed at the SIPO. Domestic Chinese companies filed 86.6% of all patent applications. Since 2001, an annual increase in patent application filing has been steady at approximately 20%, which shows that Chinese companies are realizing the power of protecting their intellectual property. Furthermore, litigation statistics suggest that Chinese companies are increasingly becoming aggressive with patent enforcement, and during the last three years, the total number of patent infringement related cases filed in China exceeded that in the United States! Hence, any company operating in China would need to have a solid IP strategy to be successful in that country.