China outlines IP plans for emerging industries
China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) has released plans to boost IP protection for emerging industries in order to make them more globally competitive.
On February 18, SIPO published 2013 Intellectual Property Work Plan for Strategic Emerging Industries, which is aimed at seven innovative industries: energy saving and environmental protection; IT; high-end equipment manufacturing; biology; new energy; new materials and new energy vehicles.
The document, part of a coordinated government strategy to support emerging industries, proposes measures such as improving patent protection; strengthening patent examination standards; boosting IP enforcement; and encouraging Chinese companies to expand abroad.
Other measures include introducing a review system for selected major projects, where local patent offices will work with companies to identify potential IP risks in foreign investment and technology licensing, and closely monitoring trends in global patent technologies.
SIPO and nine other government agencies outlined in May 2012 that they were targeting boosting innovation in the seven emerging industries. At the time, the government said it wanted the 2010 figure for national and international patent filings representing those industries to have doubled by 2015.
It added that trademark, copyright and software protection will be stronger by 2015, and by 2020, the industries will be able to effectively create, protect and manage their IP, and begin cultivating comparative advantages.
Horace Lam, partner at Jones Day in Beijing, encouraged foreign enterprises that have developed or are developing advanced technologies in the named industries to forge closer business relationships with Chinese companies.
“This will allow Chinese companies to gain access to the world's advanced technologies, or jointly develop them,” he said.
He added: “While enjoying all the benefit and encouragement for working with Chinese companies, foreign enterprises need to watch out for hurdles and challenges. Business cooperation brings risks to foreign enterprises with regard to trade secret and proprietary information and technology protection, challenges to ownership of improvements made to advanced technologies and to ownership of jointly developed technologies in China.”
Western countries often criticise China for failing to sufficiently protect IP in the country. The new strategy, though it is targeted only at emerging industries, may encourage critics that the government is shoring up the IP system.
China is also in the process of reviewing some of its IP laws and has been stepping up IP enforcement in recent times. In January this year, Chinese web company Xunlei has shut down its search engine Gougou, which the US government had accused of promoting piracy.
