China enhances IPR to boost tech innovation
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-10-01 10:14

Huawei Company based in Shenzhen, South China, now takes 5 percent of the core patents of WCDMA technologies for mobile communication, an achievement that is hard won among Chinese companies.

Statistics from the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) indicated that Huawei made 1,231 patent applications in the first half of this year, ranking first in Chinese companies.

So far Huawei has applied more than 8,000 patents, including about 800 patents in more than 20 countries and regions such as France, Germany and the United States.

Huawei invested more than 4 billion yuan (494 million US dollars), or ten percent of its annual sales, in research and development, which nears the level of profitable multinationals.

Huawei is an example for China's latest boost for technological innovation and intellectual property protection.

Minister of Science Xu Guanhua said, "We need to develop key technologies as much as possible and gain more intellectual property."

"The patented strategic high technologies will sharpen our competitiveness and help safeguard our national security," Xu said.

China has set the strategy of revitalizing the nation through science and education. Some Chinese companies, such as Haier and Sinopec (China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation), are competitive in the global arena with their unique intellectual property strategies.

However, China still lags behind developed countries in the field of intellectual property.

A survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences showed that between 1993 and 2002, China's patent application was only ten percent of that of Japan and 25 percent that of the United States.

Yin Xintian, a senior SIPO official in charge of policy planning, said, in the last decade, developed countries moved their manufacturing industries to China and other developing countries.

While keeping China and other developing countries as the world's manufacturing bases, Yin noted, the developed countries want to maintain the status as the global research and development powerhouse.

"Making painstaking efforts for technological innovation and intellectual property is of vitally importance for us to compete with the developed countries," Yin said.

As China is enforcing its national intellectual property strategy, said SIPO Commissioner Tian Lipu, "We hope to establish a comprehensive legal system by 2010 for remarkable improvement in innovation capabilities and the competitive edges of big Chinese companies."

An effective legal system is the basis for intellectual property protection. In the last two decades, China adopted a series of laws to this effect, including the patent law, trademark law and copyright law, which are compatible with the trade-related intellectual property regulations set by the World Trade Organization.

Jia Zhipei, who chairs the Supreme People's Court's intellectual property court, said in 2004, Chinese courts handled a total of 12,205 intellectual property cases, 31.65 percent more than the previous year.

While strengthening law enforcement in intellectual property protection, China sets a seven-year imprisonment as punishment for intellectual property infringement, which is toughest throughout the world.

The Chinese government promised in a latest white paper on intellectual property protection in April that it will take responsibility for intellectual property protection and carry out international cooperation in this field.

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