China Achieves Remarkable Success in IPR Protection

According to the State Intellectual Property Office, Intellectual Property Right (IPR) protection in China has achieved 1.38 million patent applications for inventions in 2017. This is a striking increase of 14.2 per cent, the highest since 2010. Shen Changyu, head of the office, remarked on the results in a Beijing forum evaluating the country’s achievement in IPR from the 2008 unveiling of a national strategy.

Currently, China is in the process of revising Patent Laws to establish a punitive damage system for intellectual property infringement. Forceful measures are being promoted to ensure a more streamlined process. The processing cycle of patent infringement cases has been shortened from three months to one while the authorisation cycle for invention patents has been reduced to three months from over twenty-two. Finally, the review cycle of trademark registration has been cut from nine to eight months.

Nationally, China has pushed for the transformation of intellectual property in university circles. This transformation and application of intellectual property have led to the rapid development of China’s patent-intensive industries which formulates 12.4 per cent of GDP. Nearly 80 per cent of universities in China have either a full or part-time intellectual property institution. From 2008 to 2016, the Chinese Academy of Sciences increased the total revenue of transfer of intellectual property rights from 642 million RMB to 2.56 billion RMB (257 cases to 1,154 cases).
In 2017, with 51,000 Patent Cooperation Treaty applications, China ranked second in international patent applications. In the past five years, there have been 192,000 patent infringement and counterfeit investigations and punishments in China and 173,000 cases of trademark infringement and penalties. Between 2012 and 2017, the level of social satisfaction with IPR protection in China climbed from 63.69 to 76.69.

As a result of this economic boom, China has united with many international intellectual property conventions through signed agreements with patent review organisations in the Patent Prosecution Highway. With Chinese enterprises reaching global, the need for overseas intellectual property protection has become a first-class priority. As a result of this, Shen stated that China would further deepen international cooperation in IPR and promote open and fair IPR rules across the board. [Source: CNIPR.com]