City sees 9% rise in patent applications

Shanghai granted more than 100,000 patents last year from over 173,600 applications, rises of 15 and 9 percent, respectively, compared with 2018, according to the city's 2019 intellectual property development white paper released on Tuesday.

The number of invention patent applications reached 71,400 and there are nearly 130,000 valid patents in the city with 54 patents owned by 10,000 residents on average, ranking the second among all provinces and municipalities in China, said Rui Wenbiao, head of the Shanghai Intellectual Property Administration.

Last year the city received 438,800 trademark applications, an increase of 7 percent. About 361,000 trademarks were newly registered and there are nearly 1.5 million valid trademarks in the city.

More than 290,000 copyrights were put on record and 27 new plant variety applications from Shanghai were granted.

With patent applications are increasing, the city strengthened its protection of intellectual property and strictly cracked down on related crimes.

Last year the intellectual property administration accepted 292 patent disputes and solved 280. It dispatched 349 officers to 55 large-scale international exhibitions and tackled 185 complaints on site.

In one case handled by the administration, German drug manufacturer Bayer applied for a settlement on the dispute between it and Shanghai Acebright Pharmaceuticals Group Co after it suspected its patent right had been infringed by Acebright.

According to Bayer, Acebright posted information about cancer treatment sorafenib, whose patent is owned by Bayer, on its official site and promoted the drug at an exhibition as its own product.

After an investigation, the administration found Acebright did promise to sell sorafenib and ordered the company to stop as well as deleting all the related information on its website and destroying all signs and brochures mentioning the product.

Meanwhile, local courts accepted 23,580 cases related to intellectual property and handled 23,510. Procuratorates charged 683 people involved in 340 crimes.

Shanghai police caught 1,150 suspects in 630 cases with the amount of money involved reaching 6.8 billion yuan.

The market watchdog handled 1,779 trademark cases and imposed fines of over 14 million yuan.

The law enforcement team of Shanghai Culture and Tourism Administration seized 370,000 illegally published pirate books, audio and video products, and closed 13 websites with pirate online resources.