Tianjin Binhai New Area (TBNA) is a new development area of state level approved by the State Council of China. TBNA is also the first national comprehensive reform and innovation district in China, and the national intellectual property experimental region. In 2014, its GDP reached up to 876.015 billion yuan, and its GDP per capita reached about US $51800, among the best regions in China. At the end of 2014, the Chinese government set up the China (Tianjin) Free Trade Zone in TBNA, which is one of the main free trade zones in China.
Due to its importance in national innovation development strategy, TBNA provides comprehensive training and guidance of intellectual property by introducing outstanding professional intellectual property service institution to improve the soft power of this national innovation experimental district. The training and guidance aim to create a good atmosphere of intellectual property in TBNA, make the enterprise actually grasp the application methods of intellectual property in practical cases, help the enterprise protect and utilize intellectual property, and finally enhance the market abilities of enterprises.
To ensure the effectiveness of training, the TBNA government strictly selected the intellectual property service institution to carry out the training and guidance of intellectual property. The selection not only considered the high level abilities as an intellectual property agency, but also valued the operation abilities and the expression skills. Due to the excellent performance in multiple tests including written material, trial lecture, and training program, Brighthead Intellectual Property Ltd. became the exclusive training institution of TBNA’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) in the field of intellectual property.
Why chose Brighthead? Mrs. Zhang, the deputy director of TBNA IPO said, “Brighthead is a professional team with high quality and high standard. The key members include patent agent with many years of work experience in USA, former patent examiner, and expert in enterprise intellectual property management. They all have about ten years of work experience. Above all, guided by creating market value for enterprises, Brighthead’s training program includes not only the basic knowledge of applying for intellectual property, but also many courses about the practical utilization of intellectual property. Their training courses of applying for intellectual property are very rich in form, and provide various instances besides the basic concepts.”
Under the trust and support from the government, Brighthead carried out 31 intellectual property training sessions with six main themes in 2014, covering 500 companies and 1500 enterprise intellectual property personnel. The training includes the Chinese and overseas practice of intellectual property, the patent retrieval analysis and warning analysis, the patent evaluation and operation, the enterprise intellectual property management, the intellectual property policy about science-and-technology management personnel, and other hot topics. From the professional point of view, the training about the practice of intellectual property can be divided into biological medicine, electricity, and mechanics. From the service point of view, it can be divided into Chinese patent application, Chinese patent OA response, overseas patent application, and overseas patent OA response. Furthermore, the training team carried out 3 one-to-one intellectual property support activities to solve enterprises’ practical problems about intellectual property.
With the support and services of Brighthead, both the quality and the amount of patents applied for by TBNA enterprises have improved considerably last year. About 10 enterprises have completed the intellectual property warning analysis of the core product to reduce the risk of entering the oversea market. Furthermore, because most enterprise intellectual property personnel have not participated in standardization work before and could not explicitly express the content in standard and patents, Brighthead wrote the first application guidance book in China, called The Application Manual of Enterprise Intellectual Property Management Specification, on the basis of the training course materials, to provide the training with high practicability.
In 2015, TBNA will face with both new opportunities and new challenges in building the free trade experimental zone and the national innovation experimental district. The protection and risk prevention of intellectual property in enterprises is a crucial problem. In this case, TBNA government cooperates with Brighthead again to start the 2015 project of TBNA intellectual property training. It is expected that more than 3000 people from about 1000 enterprises will participate in the training, and more than 50 training sessions will be held.
Brighthead’s training project in 2015 will cover all the aspects of enterprise intellectual property management, including the creation, maintenance, application, and protection of intellectual property. The training will guide the enterprise to build a comprehensive application system including patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and technical standards. This will establish a good intellectual property system, and hence provide solid security for building free trade zone and innovation experimental district. The training will focus on the patent management personnel in demonstration enterprises and key science-and-technology enterprises. The combination of large-scale training and small-scale training will be used in training the principal and the manager of the enterprises to strengthen the good interaction between lecturers and training objects. The one-to-one intellectual property support activities will be held to strengthen the guidance for the practical work of enterprises. The training will be carried out for the nearest enterprises in each region according to the distribution of enterprises. Moreover, the trained experts will be examined after each training; the performance will be analyzed in the unit of enterprise and will be considered in the acceptance testing and the appraisal of science-and-technology projects.
During the past two years, the cooperation between Brighthead and TBNA has achieved an initial success. Brighthead and TBNA will not only promote the training of traditional intellectual property, but also guide the enterprises to speed up their development and solve the practical problems on the basis of building free trade zone and innovation experimental district. The cooperation will further build a good atmosphere of intellectual property in TBNA, and hence create many model enterprises in protecting and utilizing intellectual property.
