An intellectual property rights (IPR) development program has
been included in China's national planning.
The 11th Five-Year Plan includes an IPR proposal
which highlights its role in promoting social and economic
growth.
The draft of the IPR development program for 2006-10 has been
submitted to the State Council for approval and will be made public
soon, said the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO).
Their spokesman, Yin Xintian, said the program places emphasis
on the quality of China's intellectual properties rather than their
number. The number of Chinese patents and trademarks leads the
world.
Statistics from SIPO show the number of patent applications
filed with the office including invention, utility, model and
design, was 573,000 in 2006. This is a 20 percent jump
year-on-year. The number of Patent Cooperation Treaty applications,
these are international, soared by 57 percent over 2005 to 3,826 in
2006. .
Patents to top 3 Million
It's expected that the number of Chinese patent applications
will maintain an annual growth rate of 10 to 20 percent over the
next four years, Yin told reports at a press conference yesterday
in Beijing.
Yin said that by the end of 2006 the accumulated number of
patent applications topped 3.33 million. Of these 1.1 million were
inventions.
"It took nearly 15 years for China to reach its first one
million patent applications following the introduction of the
Patent Law in the mid-1980s," Yin said. "It then took about four
years to reach the next million but it only took two more years to
reach the three million mark."
However, Yin pointed out that although the growth of patents was
much faster than in the rest of world their quality lagged far
behind the leading IPR countries.
Yin said the national IPR strategy, which has been discussed by
more than 20 ministries for nearly two years, will be agreed by
June this year.
China's Vice-Premier, Wu Yi, heads the team overseeing the strategy,
assisted by senior officials from SIPO, the Ministry of Commerce,
the National Copyright Administration and the Administration for
Industry and Commerce.
Yin said research into 20 projects in the strategy was complete
and the reports would be sent to a panel of experts for
consideration next month. The strategy outline of the strategy was
expected to be finalized by February.
Plans to help domestic businesses be more IPR-savvy are included
in the document, Yin said. The drive to encourage domestic
companies to develop IPR portfolios of their own comes as more
businesses find themselves at the wrong end of IPR lawsuits.
"The friction over IPR between domestic and overseas enterprises
is on the rise at present," said Yin. "But the pressure can help
Chinese business people have a better understanding of IPR and make
IPR an integral part of their business strategy."
(China Daily January 31, 2007)