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's booming economy 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.
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(Xinhua News Agency October 23, 2007)