China steps up IPR protection
Gu Yekai, People’s Daily
China recently issued a guideline
calling for intensified protection of intellectual property rights (IPR).
Titled “The Guideline on Strengthening
Intellectual Property Rights Protection”, the document proposed a series of
innovative measures to protect IPR, and clearly emphasized the goal of
achieving strict, widespread, fast and equal IPR protection.
In recent years, China has made
increasing efforts to strengthen IPR protection. From 2013 to 2018, the country
investigated and prosecuted 269,000 patent infringement and counterfeiting
cases and 201,000 trademark infringement and counterfeiting cases.
In the first half of the year, China
advanced patent and trademark administrative law enforcement, investigating and
prosecuting 6,529 cases of patent infringement and counterfeiting, and 11,500
trademark violations.
The document calls for strengthening the
punishment for infringements and counterfeiting, regulating evidence
collection, intensifying law enforcement measures and improving the protection
system for new business forms.
Wu Handong, honorary director of the
intellectual property research center with Zhongnan University of Economics and
Law, said the document has improved the policy framework on stricter IPR
protection through giving more play to the role of institutional constraints.
Meanwhile, through pushing for the
revision of the Patent Law, the Trademark Law and the Copyright Law, the
document provides a legal guarantee for stricter IPR protection.
Through the Internet plus IPR protection
initiative, China has built a convenient, efficient, and low-cost channel for
rights protection. In December 2018, 38 Chinese ministries and departments launched
the joint punishment of serious IPR infringements. Besides, through innovating
the IPR protection mechanism, the country has significantly improved the
capability and efficiency of IPR protection.
The document also calls for greater
efforts on the monitoring of IPR-related law enforcement, promoting an IPR
governance system in the whole society, and providing professional support for
IPR protection.
Sun Jungong, vice president of Alibaba,
said IPR protection should involve the efforts of governments, owners of
intellectual property, and e-commerce platforms, to share governance
information and technologies, and achieve mutual benefit and win-win benefits
through joint collaboration.
In the first half of 2019, China
shortened the invention patent review period to 22.7 months, and high-value
patent review period to 20.5 months, and reduced the average review period for
trademark registration to no more than 5 months. The country is seeing
improving efficiency and quality in intellectual property review and strengthening
IPR source protection.
In recent years, China has made globally
acknowledged achievements in IPR protection. The level of social satisfaction
with IPR protection in China climbed from a score of 63.69 to 76.88 between
2012 and 2018.
The number of non-resident IPR
applications, a weathervane that reflects a country’s intellectual property
protection level, maintained continuous growth over the past years.
In the first half of the year, the
number of foreign invention patent applications in China reached 78,000, up 8.6
percent year on year. The number of foreign trademark applications in China
reached 127,000, an increase of 15.4 percent year on year.
China will make greater efforts to step
up international cooperation in IPR protection, facilitate communication
between domestic and foreign rights holders, provide support in overseas IPR
disputes, and improve coordination and information acquisition mechanism,
according to the document.
Song Hefa, a researcher with the Chinese
Academy of Sciences, said that China gives equal IPR protection to various
entity and individual right owners, and doesn’t treat disputed right holders of
different nature, types, sources and sizes differently or discriminate against
them.
The country also gives equal treatment
to domestic and foreign companies, big and small companies, state-owned and
private companies, and universities and scientific research institutes, and
non-profit organizations in terms of IPR protection.
Experts pointed out that strengthening
intellectual property protection is the most important part of improving the
property right protection system and the biggest incentive to improve China’s
economic competitiveness.
With the implementation of a series of
innovative measures, China will improve intellectual property protection
capacity and level in a comprehensive manner.
China steps up IPR protection
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