Zhang Yu

JeniZhang13@163.com

SHENZHEN has seen stronger protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) and faster development of innovation over the past year, according to the Shenzhen Administration for Market Regulation (Shenzhen Intellectual Property Administration).

The administration held a meeting to give a rundown on the city’s solid progress in IPR protection and showcased some representative IPR-related projects to the public yesterday, the 21st World Intellectual Property Day.

Shenzhen has cultivated some 30 high-value patent portfolios, developed eight trademark and brand demonstration bases and built four IPR big data platforms in 2020, said Zhang Xuebin, a senior official with the administration.

“The level of intellectual property creation, application and service was greatly elevated in Shenzhen last year,” said Zhang.

In 2020, seven intellectual property securitization products gained approval for issuance in the city. Eighteen enterprises engaged in intellectual property pledge financing and 67 patent insurance enterprises received government subsidies.

Pang Hongshen, vice director of Shenzhen University IPR Information Service Center, disclosed at the meeting that a university intellectual property big data platform has been established in Shenzhen.

The platform has built a patent database that encompasses more than 20 million pieces of data from more than 2,900 universities in China and 100 top universities abroad, according to Pang.

A series of guidelines on protecting IPR overseas were also released at the meeting. The guidelines cover topics such as enterprises responding to Section 337 investigations in the United States, IPR protection in the e-commerce industry in the United States, the European Union and Indonesia, and the planning and protection of IPR in the biomedical industry.

According to data released by the administration Friday, Shenzhen boasted the largest number of domestically authorized patents, international patent applications through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and trademark applications in China in 2020.

By the end of December 2020, the number of effective invention patents in Shenzhen reached 160,046, up 15.53 percent year on year. The number of invention patents per 10,000 people stood at 119.1, about 8 times the national average of 15.8.

China handled 31,300 trademark violation cases and over 42,000 administrative adjudication cases related to patent infringement disputes last year, Shen Changyu, head of the National Intellectual Property Administration (NIPA), said at a press conference Sunday.

China moved up to 14th place in the Global Innovation Index of 2020 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), ranking first among the mid-income economies globally.

In 2020, China was the largest user of the WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty system, with nearly 69,000 applications.