On June 15, 2026, China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) warned in a Public Notice Regarding “Intellectual Property Agency” and “Patent Agency” Enterprises That Have Not Obtained a Patent Agency Practice License (关于对未取得专利代理机构执业许可证的“知识产权代理”“专利代理”企业的公示) that there were over 14 thousand companies with names that include patent agency or intellectual property agency in their names despite not having a patent agency license. CNIPA has been continuously cracking down on fraud and other issues in the patent agency industry and announced in 2025 it was deepening its long-running Blue Sky rectification campaign.
The Public Notice states:
To safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of innovation entities and maintain the order of patent agency administrative licensing, and to guide innovation entities to improve their ability to identify agency services and avoid choosing unqualified patent agencies, we are now publicly listing 14,460 companies whose names contain words such as “intellectual property agency” or “patent agency” but have not obtained a patent agency practice license. (Data as of December 31, 2025). Please refer to the “Risk List Announcement” section for the detailed list. The companies on the list only face risks when engaging in patent agency business; this does not affect their legal and compliant conduct of other intellectual property businesses such as trademark agency.
Going forward, the Intellectual Property Utilization and Promotion Department of the CNIPA will update the list of published documents monthly based on the results of patent agency practice license approvals and trademark agency registrations.
If there are any errors in the information of the companies on the above list, please contact us for correction (telephone number 010-62083050).
The searchable list is available here (Chinese only). A separate list of 192 “black market patent agencies” (违规擅自开展专利代理业务（黑代理）被处罚的机构) is also available at the same site.
