National intellectual property rights center to set up in Pudong
Shanghai's 1st national intellectual property rights protection service center was established in Pudong to shorten the patent application process and enhance the IPR protections.
Shanghai's first national intellectual property rights protection service center was established in Pudong New Area today to shorten the patent application process and enhance the IPR protections.
The China (Pudong) Intellectual Property Rights Protection Center based in the Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park will help to shorten the patent application for new inventions by half to about 15 months, said Lu Guoqiang, director of the Shanghai Intellectual Property Administration.
"A shorter process will help to increase the competitiveness of local companies under the fierce global competition on new technologies," Lu told a press conference. Previously, applicants had to apply their patents to the State Intellectual Property Office in Beijing for approval and the evaluation could last for about 30 months.
The center will hire an expert panel to firstly evaluate and help to improve the patents before submitting to the national office. Those submit through the Pudong center can also enjoy a faster "green channel" in Beijing, he said.
Currently, the center can offer the fast access on high-end facility manufacturing and bio-pharmaceutical industries for Pudong-based companies from both home and abroad, and will expand to other industries later.
The two pillar industries of Pudong generated over 140 billion yuan (US$20.7 billion) in production values in 2016 along with over 7,000 approved patents. They mainly came from leading industrial companies such as the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), MicroPort Scientific Corporation and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Shanghai) Corp,
"IPR technologies have become the core competitiveness of COMAC during its competition with Boeing and Airbus," said Shen Bo, deputy director with the research and development center of COMAC, the manufacturer of China's first domestically-developed narrow-body aircraft C919.
Shen said COMAC had developed many patents on jet manufacturing which desire proper protections with the help of the new center.
"We are looking forward that our new pharmaceutical products can receive the patents sooner so that the consumers can also be able to use the innovative medicines earlier," said Li Caihui, the IPR director with the local Guojian Pharmaceutical.
The center is expected to help applying 2,400 patents on new inventions and another 5,000 on new utility devices and new artistic creations by 2020, said Bao Ying, deputy director with the Pudong IPR bureau.
Furthermore, the center will offer "one-stop" services such as consultancy and legal assistance against IPR infringement, Lu said. Its law enforcement team will supervise on local markets and crack down on infringements on patents, trademarks and copyrights, he added.
China had applied over 40,000 patents under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, an international patent law treaty in 2016, mainly from Shenzhen in south China Guangdong Province. The telecommunications giants Huawei Technologies and Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment Corp based in Shenzhen had over 6,000 patents, while all the Shanghai-based corporations only had 1,000 last year, according to Lu.
