The central government is drafting a national strategy on
intellectual property rights (IPR) to increase the number of
patents in China, to match other major global economies, it was
revealed Monday.
Wang Jingchuan, commissioner of the State Intellectual Property
Office (SIPO), said the strategy promises to complete IPR
legislation in China in the next five to 10 years while
strengthening the enforcement of copyright laws.
The SIPO and the Ministry of Science
and Technology are currently working on the draft of the
strategy and it will be completed soon, Wang said.
He made the remarks yesterday at the 2003 Intellectual Property
Strategy and Enterprises' Key Competitiveness Forum, which was
organized by the Shanghai municipal government.
The strategy also aims to support the Agreement on Trade Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, signed by China after it
joined the World Trade Organization, and to enhance the
competitiveness of Chinese businesses.
The strategy takes account of US and Japanese IPR practices.
Wang revealed it will require governments at various levels to
offer preferential policies to encourage inventors to set up small
and medium-sized high-tech enterprises based on their patents. The
strategy will also urge domestic firms to apply for patents abroad
for promising inventions.
Japan completed its national intellectual property strategy last
July and started to implement it in March this year to maintain its
industrial competitiveness worldwide.
China's system of patent applications and IPR protection, which
has failed to keep pace with the country's booming manufacturing
industries, is still in its "early stages," Wang admitted.
Only 951 Chinese patent applications had been lodged with the
World Intellectual Property Office by the end of last year,
compared with 44,609 from the United States, 13,531 from Japan and
2,552 from South Korea.
The latest SIPO statistics also show the Chinese mainland had
applied for only 195 patents in the United States, the world's
largest market. Japan had lodged 34,856 patent applications and
Taiwan Province had lodged 5,431.
"The situation is not optimistic," said Wang.
He warned that China's manufacturing industries could not
develop sustainably if they ignored the importance of patents and
failed to innovate.
SIPO statistics show Chinese firms spent only one third of their
total purchasing budget on local innovations to assimilate imported
technologies.
Wang revealed Japanese businesses spent three times as much
developing and localizing these technologies.
China's exports are also increasingly suffering from the lack of
patented technologies.
Currently, more than 80 percent of international trade barriers
are based on technology patents, said Zheng Chengsi, a noted expert
on intellectual property law and a member of the Law Committee of
the National People's Congress.
In 2002, 71 percent of China's exporters and 39 percent of the
country's exports encountered technological trade barriers to
various degrees, with an estimated loss of US$17 billion, Zheng
said, citing statistics from the country's trade authorities.
"On the one hand, we need domestic businesses to become more
aware of IPR but, on the other hand, we also want them to defend
their legal interests," Zheng said yesterday.
(China Daily November 11, 2003)
