News & Events: Blog Articles

January 23, 2009

When I was in China last month I was present when the most senior Chinese official responsible for intellectual Property Commissioner Tian Lipu, who runs the Chinese Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), spoke at a meeting I was attending in Hong Kong. The topic of his presentation was a new Government  strategy for Intellectual Property to 2020 which the Chinese government will pursue rigorously.  This strategy states “The strategic goal is that by 2020 China will become a country with a comparatively high level in terms of the creation, utilization, protection and administration of IPRs. The legal environment for IPRs is much better, market entities are much better at the creation, utilization, protection and administration of IPRs, the public awareness of intellectual property is increased greatly, the quality and quantity of the self-relied intellectual property are able to effectively support the effectively support the effort to make China an innovative country...”

China has only had a formal IP system since the 1980s (the word intellectual property only entered the lexicon in 1979 / 1980) and already they have a terrific demand for IP.  I am full of admiration for their progress so far and there may be good reason to be upbeat about the future- the Chinese are usually serious about meeting their goals. They will be the biggest economy in the world by 2020 and we are all going to learn far more about adjusting our strategies to take this fact into account in the future.

The Chinese are not reluctant to say that Government must lead enterprises in China and that they must have financial policies etc to back up that strategy. The visitor and prospective business partners find that they have terrific incentives for firms to innovate in China, for instance in Szenchen Province you will find match funding schemes for R&D between enterprises and the Government.  In the UK there is usually a soto voce cursing and exasperation whenever mention is made of the public sector.

The Chinese have of course what they call Utility Patents which can be applied for. These are often referred to as ‘mini-patents’ and they usually involve at best light touch search and examination approaches (which of course may well affect the quality of the patent).  Often they are used for fast moving areas where the product life cycle is likely to be quite short. They of course only have application in the jurisdiction in which they have been granted.  Over 30% of all applications are of this nature –so quite a significant proportion.  There are a number of people outside China who advocate their increased use in the west. Over 43% of all SIPOs applications are for industrial designs and about 26% are for invention patents with about 85% of those applications coming from overseas applicants. About 40% of all the patents granted from SIPO are to local enterprises (with many of these in fact being state-owned enterprises) with 60% being from overseas. I was struck that the Chinese experience of IP is somewhat similar to the West in many respects.  Whilst they have a massive demand for intellectual property when it comes to patents it would appear that few are being commercialized.

By 2020 SIPO will rank among the major IPOs of the world probably surpassing the US in 2012 which is already hopelessly backlogged with applications, Japan and the European Patent Office.   The Chinese see IP as essential and central to the development of their country, it is already a core resource of the country and they still regard themselves as not having enough hi-tech talent.  They will be improving their IP regime, they know it is not perfect and this is what this new strategy is designed to effect.

I expect that we will see China exporting knowledge to other countries routinely from 2020 onwards.  They are rapidly moving beyond the manufacturing economy and are poised to take much of the knowledge economy which develops. So in answer to my question – yes I think they are serious about IP.