Abstract:  From the year of 1985 to 2005, the accumulative total of the cases of both domestic and overseas patent application which had been dealt with by the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO ) is 2761189; thereinto, the amount of food patent application is 36324, makes up 1.3% of the total of patent application. Among the food patent application, the amount of food invention patent is 27070, makes up 74.5% of the total of food patent application; the amount of food utility model patent is 7083, makes up 19.5% of the total of food patent application; the amount of food design patent is 2171, makes up 6.0% of the total of food patent application. The food patent application characterizes in three aspects: first, the amount of food patent application increases rapidly and steadily; second, the amount of invention patent makes up the majority of the amount of the three kinds of patent application; third, the proportion of the amount of food patent application and the total amount of patent application is rather slight, and the scope of increasing is large.

Key words: food, patent application