China to “up” quality of its patents

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02:37

China’s continued focus on strengthening its intellectual property rights cannot come at a more critical and timely period – when it seeks to further open up to foreign businesses, and as it switches gears from a ‘Made in China’ model to a ‘Designed in China’ one.

Zhang Zhicheng, the director general of the Protection and Coordination Department at China’s State Intellectual Property Office said China has made great progress over the years – especially from the perspective of application and registration of patent trademarks.

In 2017, patent applications in China rose 14 percent year-on-year to almost 1.4 million, with patent authorization rising nearly 4 percent to 420-thousand.

Meanwhile, according to the State Intellectual Property Office's 2017 satisfaction report, China has seen an improvement in all its scores for first-level indicators. They range from legal policy and protection, law enforcement, to management and service, as well as publicity and education.

That said, Zhang said China’s IP landscape still lags that of developed countries.

“We have a large gap in the number of patents we own, as well as effective patent volume per capita, compared with that of the US. Secondly, in terms of the distribution of patents, we only have 50-thousands of overseas patents compared to the US's more than 200-thousand every year,” he said.

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Going forward, Zhang said China should increase efforts in improving the independent ability to innovate among Chinese companies.

“We will also continue to cooperate with other nations in protecting IP rights,” Zhang added.

Chinese President Xi Jinping at the recent Boao Forum for Asia 2018 stressed that: “Stronger intellectual property rights protection is a requirement of foreign enterprises, and even more so of Chinese enterprises.”

According to Zhang, foreign joint ventures now have stronger means to protect themselves, in line with the Chinese government's adherence to equal protection.

“China already has some leading enterprises such as Huawei which have a large number of effective invention patents. It can be said that their capabilities are comparable to some of the multinational companies,” he said.

“However, we should also note that some of our small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as private enterprises, are still weak in protecting their rights. At the same time, we have enterprises which inadequately invest in IP.”