Rouse heads East to open Chinese IP centre

IP law firm Rouse has teamed up with Tsinghua University in Beijing to open what they say is China’s first dedicated IP centre for businesses.

The centre, in part financed by Rouse, will provide education, legal advice and business tips for Chinese innovators, who can attend seminars, lectures and courses on IP law and strategy.

It will be available to the university’s 31,000 students and past alumni, as well as start-ups and businesses clustered in Beijing’s Haidian district.

Rouse, which is basing an IP specialist at Tsinghua, has been working with the university since 2009, when it helped to launch a business course on IP.

Pearl Donghui Mao, executive director of Tsinghua University’s x-lab, where the IP centre will be hosted, said Rouse’s continuing support at the university will be “invaluable to us in promoting knowledge of IP throughout Tsinghua’s community of entrepreneurs”.

Ian Harvey, founder of the innovation and IP strategy course at Tsinghua, added:

“China is on the way to becoming one of the world’s great innovative nations and intellectual property is a key ingredient in translating innovation into products that will benefit the world.

“Tsinghua has already taken a global lead by introducing IP management into its MBA programme. The creation of the IP centre within the x-lab is now a further ground-breaking step that will help Tsinghua entrepreneurs, Tsinghua students, graduates and alumni use IP effectively to bring new products to market.

“Rouse, as a leading IP firm in China, brings to the IP centre its knowledge of IP strategy as applied in China and globally. Its financial and in-kind support of the IP centre is a tribute both to the purpose of the centre and to Rouse’s insight into the importance of innovation in China,” he said.