Patent applications from China now rank fourth among all filings with the European Patent Office, a sign of rapid progress in the country's intellectual property sphere, said EPO President Benoit Battistelli.

The annual filings from China increased tenfold at EPO over the past decade and maintain robust growth momentum, Battistelli told a Sino-European patent cooperation forum in Lyon, France, on Saturday.

In 2014 alone, Chinese filers contributed 9 percent of some 270,000 applications filed with EPO.

SIPO Commissioner Shen Changyu (center) and EPO President Benoit Battistelli (left) discuss China-Europe patent cooperation. Tang Shuyue / For China Daily

In the same year, China's State Intellectual Property Office received nearly 1 million invention patent applications, including some 127,000 from abroad.

The European Union was the second-largest overseas filer in China, with 28 percent of foreign filings with SIPO from EU member states.

"The top three areas where China presented the most patent applications to the EPO were digital communication, computer technology and telecommunications," said Battistelli, adding that this result fully reflects the strength of the Chinese economy, which has reached a global leading level in the field of information and communication technologies.

Chinese telecommunications giants Huawei Technologies and ZTE are among the top 10 filers in Europe.

In contrast to China's clustering in the three domains, European filings covered a variety of sectors in China, including agriculture, transportation and luxury goods.

There is a fundamental change in the Chinese economy - just a couple of years ago, China was compared to a world factory and now it is emerging as a global research and development center, Battistelli said.

IP has played a crucial role in the change, as a modern IP system is sure to give the Chinese economy a strong boost, he noted.

The cooperation between EPO and its Chinese peer, SIPO, over the past 30 years has brought win-win results to both sides, he said.

Many similarities in the IP systems of China and Europe have facilitated bilateral trade and exchanges in research, thus helping both reinforce their positions as innovation hubs, the EPO president said.

A complete, improved IP system built in China also benefits Europe because of close ties in patents and property between the two sides, he said.

European companies that intend to expand in China need to become familiar with the patent system in the country for better protection of their innovations and creations. It is the same case with Chinese companies that are interested in access to the European market, Battistelli said.

With a growing demand for patent protection worldwide, the China-Europe collaboration has become a key pillar in the global patent system, he said.

SIPO Commissioner Shen Changyu told the forum that his office has long highly valued the partnership with EPO.

Since the two offices signed an agreement for cooperation in 1985, their exchanges have expanded from technical aid to strategic cooperation, ranging from law and regulation formulation and staff training to patent examination and documentation sharing.

Patent information sharing and coordinated development in administration is a focus for the bilateral collaboration.

The property offices initiated the development of a Global Dossier in 2013, which provides free online access to the file histories of patent applications from participating offices.

The service enables direct access to publicly available documents and data in four out of five major patent offices in China, Europe, South Korea and Japan.

Another large office, the United States Patent and Trademark Office will release the USPTO-hosted user interface for the Global Dossier in November, giving public stakeholders access to the full file history on a patent application family from the participating offices, according to its official website.

The China-EU cooperation promotes growth in economy, technology and culture for both sides and also helps advance global IP development and bring more interest to innovators and creators around the world, Shen said.

"Thanks to the help from EPO, we created our IP system at a high level from the very beginning," he said.

China has increasingly improved its IP system over the past three decades and is now on the path toward becoming an IP powerhouse, he said.

The forum, which was held to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the bilateral cooperation in patent work, attracted more than 140 corporate executives, government officials and patent experts from China and Europe.

They exchanged views on the China-EU collaboration's influence on the global IP landscape.

Tang Shuyue and Xinhua contributed to this story.

Contact the writers at wangxin@chinadaily.com.cn and tuoyannan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 10/14/2015 page17)