On 24 july, the world intellectual property organization released the global innovation index (gii) for 2019. The report shows that china's global innovation index ranking continues to rise from 17th to 14th in 2018. The director-general of the world intellectual property organization, francis gaurn, stated that china had established a “first-class intellectual property base system”。
“in recent years, china has stepped up its efforts to protect intellectual property rights, placing great emphasis on intellectual property legislation and enforcement. In an interview with the present newspaper, li sun-de, a researcher at the institute of legal studies of the chinese academy of social sciences and a professor at the university of the chinese academy of sciences, stated that he was a member of the chinese national academy of sciences。
Equal treatment between chinese and foreign
On 19 june, the guangzhou court of intellectual property brought two guests who sent a flag and a letter of thanks. The flag reads 16 words: “innovation of the maternity protection services and the efficient determination of differences in the law”
The guests were sent by the sociÉtÉ sant'loran of france. The company has a world-renowned fashion brand, the "ysl " . In may 2018, the plaintiff, yves st. Laurent, inc., and st. Roland (shanghai) trading ltd. Filed an action before the guangzhou court of intellectual property rights on the grounds that the defendant, guangzhou trading ltd., had violated his trademark rights and constituted undue competition。
Initially, yves st. Laurent believed that the case could not be completed for two or three years. For relatively complex ipr cases, the main eu countries have a trial cycle of about 18 months, while the united states takes 29 months. It took only half a year to complete the case。
As the case judge, morway jian told the report about the course of the case. The company, yves st. Laurent, would like to be able to close the case quickly in order to reduce the damage caused by the violations. Having accurately grasped the core of the conflict, moravian assisted the parties in reaching a consensus on key facts, such as the form of violation, the number of trademarks, etc., which ultimately led to a settlement agreement。
The letter of thanks, which begins with the name of “the honourable judge moe”, has the pleasure of receiving the approval of the client. He also stated: “this is in fact an endorsement of our philosophy of justice and our judicial style, and is yet another illustration of china's equal protection of intellectual property rights, both chinese and foreign, under the law.”
Five years ago, beijing, shanghai and guangzhou established the first chinese courts on intellectual property rights, moving out of a chinese path of judicial protection of intellectual property rights。
Since its establishment, the beijing intellectual property court has dealt with a large number of intellectual property cases. More than 14,000 cases were closed in 2018, and the number of judges per judge exceeded 300, with an average annual increase of more than 50 per cent. In 2018, the shanghai court of intellectual property dealt with 2067 cases of various types of intellectual property, with a 100 per cent completion rate throughout the year。
China has also continued to improve its laws and regulations, including the “establishment of a system of punitive compensation for sound intellectual property rights”, which is of general concern to the outside world。
On 24 july, during a routine briefing on state council policy, song jianhua, director of the department of regulation and law, national intellectual property administration, introduced the punitive intellectual property compensation system:
In 2015, the national intellectual property authority submitted to the state council the draft revised patents act (for submission), proposing specific programmes to establish punitive damages for patent infringement。
In december 2018, the draft amendment to the patent law was considered by the standing committee of the state council and its first review was held by the standing committee of the national people's congress from 23 to 29 december 2018. The draft amendment to the patent law provides for punitive damages of between one and five times for intentional infringement of patent rights and increases the legal compensation from the current “more than $1,000,000” to “more than $500,000”。
On 23 april this year, the standing committee of the national people's congress considered and adopted amendments to the trademark act, which further increased the amount of compensation for malicious infringement of trademark rights from more than twice to less than three times that for exclusive use to less than five times, and raised the statutory ceiling from $3 million to $5 million。
At the same time, china is intensifying its efforts to combat crimes against intellectual property rights。
In the first half of this year, the local people's courts concluded more than 150,000 cases of civil first instance of intellectual property, an increase of about 80 per cent over the same period; concluded more than 2,000 cases of first instance of offences against intellectual property, an increase of about 23 per cent over the same period; the national procurator's office approved the arrest of more than 1,900 cases of offences against intellectual property, or more than 3,400 persons; and in january-may, the national public security organs solved more than 4,200 cases of offences involving violations and forgery, and arrested more than 9,900 suspects, worth over $4. 8 billion。
“china has an extraordinary development path in the field of intellectual property and has now become the leader of the global intellectual property system.” francis gautt said that for an economy as large and diversified as china, such achievements in a short period of time were truly impressive。
Foreign investors are confident
Simon is spain's 100-year brand and the world's top 500 companies. Simon electric asia-pacific management centre, vice-president and director general of research and development innovation, zolong, stated that he had previously communicated with headquarters to bring fluvia (commercial lighting series) into the chinese market, but that headquarters had concerns about intellectual property protection in china。
At china's first international import fair in 2018, simon electric officially introduced products such as fluvia into the chinese market。
“fluvia must not only enter the chinese market, but we also decide on domesticization.” simon electric asia-pacific president and chairman of simon electric (china) said zhu jianjiu。
The change in simon's electrical attitude is due to improved intellectual property protection in china。
According to william mansfield, director general of global intellectual property rights at aiepo industries ltd., china’s intellectual property protection has improved considerably in a relatively short period of time, which is one of the reasons why more and more foreign firms are willing to come to china。
According to valerie sonier, global director of intellectual property of louis vuitton, “we see china taking positive action to impose severe penalties for violations of intellectual property rights and trust that the legitimate rights and interests of foreign enterprises in china will be protected more effectively”
These views are corroborated by authoritative investigation reports. The 2019 business confidence survey, published by the chinese chamber of commerce in may, revealed that about 60 per cent of the 585 enterprises interviewed in china considered china’s intellectual property administration and judicial protection to be significantly enhanced. The international intellectual property index report, published by the united states chamber of commerce in march, specifically points to china's achievements in improving the online marketing environment and in drug patent enforcement。
Data published by the national intellectual property agency also show that in the first half of 2019, the number of applications for foreign intellectual property rights in china continued to grow over the years, reaching 78,000 applications for patents on foreign inventions in china, an increase of 8. 6 per cent over the same period, and 127,000 applications for foreign trademarks in china, an increase of 15. 4 per cent over the same period。
The director of the strategic planning division of the national intellectual property agency, ghu, stated that “the number of ipr applications from non-residents is a `windmark' and `brainsheet' reflecting a country's level of intellectual property protection and business environment. The data for the first half of the year fully reflect the firm confidence of global innovation actors in the protection of intellectual property rights and the business environment in china.”
According to lee sun-de, “the continuing importance attached to china's state level has given the international community confidence in china's intellectual property protection”
Infusion of development dynamism
The confidence of the international community stems from china's tremendous progress in the area of intellectual property in recent years. Currently, china's intellectual property rights move from quantitative growth to a higher stage of structural optimization and quality improvement。
According to data published by the national intellectual property authority, at the end of june 2019, there were 17. 40 million patents on inventions in the country (excluding hong kong and australia), and 12. 5 patents per 10,000 people. This represents an increase of 1. 0 items over the end of 2018 and the completion of 12 targets set in the “13 v” plan ahead of schedule。
In the first half of the year, job inventions accounted for 91. 2 per cent of domestic patent applications for inventions, an increase of 5. 7 percentage points over the same period in 2018; the number of individual patent applications for inventions decreased by 46. 0 per cent over the same period, and the proportion of applications for patents for inventions continued to decline, indicating that the structure of patent applications for inventions in china is improving。
It is understood that the national intellectual property agency, while continuously optimizing the quality development policy system, has issued policy documents such as the " guidelines for the promotion of quality development of intellectual property rights (2019) " , which provide a rigorous mandate to review intellectual property rights and bring them into line with innovation capabilities and the level of industrial development, and reflect the idea of high-quality development。
China's increasing success in the application of intellectual property rights has strongly underpinned economic development。
In the first half of 2019, the total value of the new pledge financing for patents and trademarks nationwide was $5. 835 billion, an increase of 2. 5 per cent over the previous year, while the number of pledges was 3086, an increase of 21. 6 per cent over the previous year. Of these, the amount of the patent pledge financing was 40. 4 billion yuan, and there were 2,709 pledge projects involving 13,000 patents. Intellectual property protection has injected new dynamism into economic development。
Intellectual property financial services are not only statistically reflected in the fact that in the first half of this year, the shanghai agricultural bank issued its first intellectual property pledge loan, and the shanghai new agricultural feeds co. Ltd. Received a $3 million patent guarantee guarantee insurance loan; hunan yongzhou field mechanical equipment co. Ltd. Received a patent pledge registration letter from the state intellectual property agency; the guangdong river first patent pledge landed, and the bank of china, river source branch, signed a patent maximum pledge contract with the hawon crop agricultural science and technology co. Ltd., 19 patents as pledge finance 10 million dollars to support the production and development of agricultural products by enterprises; liaoning shenyang loop orbital transport co. Ltd. Secured five patents and obtained $5 million from the bank of hongjing bank loan. From guangdong, a pioneer of reform and opening up, to liaoning, an old industrial base in the north-east, and from the east coast to the interior of the interior, nationwide intellectual property pledge financing is generating new dynamism。
The report on the global innovation index shows that china, the only middle-income economy in the top 30 of the global innovation index, not only displays significant innovation power in a number of areas, but also offers a constant impetus to break the barriers to innovation between high-income and middle-income economies, with its rising innovation potential and a prominent return on investment in innovation。
