The quality difference analysis between environmental patents and non-environmental patents in China

Many scholars think that the patent authorization and its surviving time represent the quality level of the patent — which means the patent with higher authorization rate and longer surviving time has higher quality than the one with lower authorization rate and shorter surviving time. This paper firstly makes a comparison of the authorization and surviving time of China's environmental and non-environmental patents. Then it compares the technical complexity of them with patent classification number. After the comparison, we found that both the quality level and the technical level of China's environmental patent are lower than that of its adjacent non-environmental patent technology. This paper analyzes the major reason is that not all sectors of the society with government as the main body have paid enough attention to the research and development of environmental patents for a long time. At last, it puts forwards thoughts on the development of China's environmental patents.