China to Further Strengthen Intellectual Property Rights Protection

Mar. 26 – China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) released the “Promotion Plan for the Implementation of 2013 National Intellectual Property Strategy (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Plan’)” on March 21, 2013. The Plan provides a total of 84 measures in eight key areas relating to China’s intellectual property (IP) development in 2013. Detailed information can be found below.

Main Contents of the Plan

IP Protection

• Accelerating revisions to the Trademark Law, Copyright Law, Patent Law as well as relevant implementation regulations
• Initiating research on appropriate policies and legislation that would strengthen the protection of the innovative pharmaceuticals industry
• Increasing the number of grass-roots people’s courts which have jurisdiction over general IP cases and assigning more intermediate people’s courts to handle the first-instance IP cases
• Supervising governments at the municipal and county level to accomplish the inspection of licensed software applications before the end of 2013, and promoting the application of licensed software in enterprises
• Deepening the cooperation among customs in terms of protecting intellectual property rights (IPR) to better combat IPR infringement in international trade
• Enhancing assistance to enterprises involved in foreign-related IP lawsuits
• Studying IP protection for the national and folk arts, and establishing an IP database for Chinese folk literature

IP Creation

• Enhancing trademark registration efficiency, thereby keeping the examination period of trademark registration at around 10 months
• Implementing the revised evaluation index system for the State Technological Invention Award and improving the requirements on IP certifying documents for projects applying for the award

IP Development

Providing preferential examinations for patent applications in the following strategic emerging industries:

• Energy-saving and environmental protection industry
• New energy industry
• New material industry
• New-generation information technology industry
• Biological industry
• High-end equipment manufacturing industry

IP Management

• Offering special support to returned overseas talents who have established hi-tech enterprises with self-developed IPR
• Evaluating 100 high-level candidates and training thousands of professionals for IP development

IP Service

• Establishing a mechanism to monitor IP service activities, promoting the construction of IP service industry clusters and cultivating well-known IP service agencies
• Encouraging lawyers to provide legal services for commissioning patents and cultivating more patent attorneys in the trademark and patent commissioning industries

IP Culture

• Encouraging colleges and universities to provide IP-related courses and carry out IP education
• Guiding high-level legal education training bases to strengthen the training of IP professionals

IP Utilization

Improving policies relating to IP investment and financing, as well as creating 20 IP investment and financing service platforms.

IP Strategy

Carrying out evaluations on the implementation of the Outline of the National Intellectual Property Strategy.

As China aims to be a creative and innovative country, the protection of intellectual property in the country has become one of the major social concerns. Huang Qing, a senior official in SIPO, said China will continue to improve the IP-related laws and regulations, and improve long-term mechanisms to combat IPR infringement.

With the aim to promote the country’s IP development, China released the “Outline of National Intellectual Property Strategy” in June 2008. Since then, China has made remarkable headway. In 2012, the number of China’s invention patents granted reached 217,000 and the number of invention patents owned per 10,000 persons increased to 3.2.

Furthermore, by the end of last year, the number of China’s registered-trademarks added up to roughly 7.7 million and the number of validly-registered trademarks reached 6.4 million, both ranking first in the world. Meanwhile, the number of registered work copyrights and software copyrights reached 688,000 and 139,000 respectively, both hitting record highs.

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