The Chinese State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) released China’s first Plan for the Development of Patent Agency Industry (2009-2015) in Beijing recently. The plan proposed further improving the patent agency industry legal system and establishing a management system which would combine administrative supervision and self-regulation in the industry over the next seven years. Read More…

Results of a recent survey show that while Beijing and Guangdong residents have a reasonably high awareness of the issues surrounding intellectual property rights (IPR), the majority of their fellow countrymen know little about the question. Read More…

Less than three months after the Chinese State Council put its stamp on the patent law reform blueprint, the government submitted the draft amendment to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature, for first reading recently.

This will be the third revision to the law promulgated some 25 years ago. The previous two amendments were made in 1992 and 2000.

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The latest amendment is expected to bring the law up to date and facilitate the application process of new patents by domestic as well as foreign entities.

Tian Lipu, commissioner of the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office, said the amendment to the Patent Law would make several important changes to the application process and enforcement of the law.

An important change involves the new restrictions that bring the law in line with best international standards and applications. In the past, patents were granted to applicants as long as the products were not on sale or publicly known in China. Under the proposed amendment, the patents of such products would not be granted in “absolute” terms, requiring that they are already registered overseas.

“The newly revised draft of Patent Law reflects that China is becoming more global and the desire by the authorities to comply with international IPR standards,” said Jessica Zhu, patent specialist of Jones Day, a US international law firm.

For example, the absolute novelty standard has long been adopted in Europe and the US. “The application of this standard in China can provide better protection of foreigner applicants in China,” she said.

Another important change is the proposed removal of the statutory requirement for all Chinese individuals and entities to first file applications in China for inventions made in the country. The revision would allow Chinese individuals and entities to file their patents for the first time in other countries, not necessarily China.

The draft amendments also put forward harsher penalty for piracy acts. Violators would be fined four times their illegal gains or face a fine of up to 200,000 yuan (about 29,200 U.S. dollars) if the have no illegal gains. The current figure for the penalty is three times and 50,000 yuan (around 7,300 U.S. dollars) respectively.

Wang Ziqiang, director of the Copyright Management Division of National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC), announced that China would officially issue its national intellectual property rights strategy in 2008 to define the principles, development directions and achievements in intellectual property rights protection.

Wang disclosed the news at a press conference of NCAC recently, in which he concluded China’s copyright protection situation in 2007 and introduced the achievements that China had made in intellectual property right protection.

Wang said that the year of 2008 would be a significant year for China, because China’s intellectual property right protection would enter a new period of receiving supervision from all the WTO members under the principles of WTO now that the interim period for China’s copyrights was going to conclude.

China’s national intellectual property rights strategy is an integral part of China’s self-innovation strategies. It consists of one main strategy and 20 sub-strategies. The draft work on the strategy was started in 2005 by CNAC, State Administration for Industry and Commerce and State Intellectual Property Office of China. Until now, the draft work has been completed and the strategy has been submitted to China’s State Council for approval and is expected to be formally released this year.

Keeping busy
credits: jurvetson

China is facing a damaging shortfall in the numbers of professionals working in the field of intellectual property rights, leading academics claim.

A Forum on Intellectual Property Rights(IPR) in Higher Education heard that China will need the skills of between 55,000 and 60,000 experts in the field by 2010.

The claim came from Professor Zheng Shengli, dean of the IPR School at Peking University, in his latest research on the IPR profession.

Professor Zheng based his claims on internationally accepted standards and the practice of multi-national corporations which reveal that the proportion of IPR professionals to researchers and developers should be between 1 percent and 4 percent.

There were 3.284 million scientific personnel nationwide in 2004, and correspondingly at least 32,800 IPR professionals were needed, he said. However, only about 3,000 IPR professionals had been turned out by universities over the past 10 or more years because universities have been slow to teach the subject, Zheng said.

“The shortage of IPR professionals will hamper the development of IPR protection, which will consequently slow down the progress in scientific and other related research areas,” said Xie Xiaoyong, development director of Research and Development Center of the State Intellectual Property Office, which was the co-organizer of the forum. “China’s economic development will also be curbed as IPR has been an increasingly important factor in the global economy, if the shortfall continues,” he added.

In recent years, many universities have started master’s and doctor’s programs in IPR, in response to the shortage of IPR professionals. Eighteen universities have established IPR education and research institutes by now.

Renmin University was the first to establish an IPR education and research institute in 1986. One year later, its major in IPR law started. This was the beginning of the teaching of intellectual property rights in China’s higher education.