Recently, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the “Guideline for Building a Powerful Country with Intellectual Property Right (2021-2035)”, making detailed deployment on comprehensively promoting the construction of an IP power, improving the level of IPR creation, application, protection, management and services in all respects, and giving full play to the important role of IP systems in socialist modernization drive.

Officials from the National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) indicated that the Guideline is the blueprint for the construction of an IP power in the new era, and a milestone in the history of China’s IPR development.  

Key tasks identified

According to the Global Innovation Index 2021 issued by the World Intellectual Property Organization recently, China’s global ranking has risen from the 35th in 2013 to the 12th in 2021, a leader among the middle-income economies, and one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

According to Shen Changyu, Commissioner of CNIPA, the guideline clarifies 6 key tasks for building an IP power, including building an IPR system oriented to socialist modernization, building an IPR protection system that supports world-class business environment, establishing an IPR market operation mechanism that encourages innovation, building a public IPR service system that is convenient and beneficial to the public, fostering a cultural and social environment that helps promote high-quality IPR development and stepping up participation in global IPR governance.

In terms of IPR systems in emerging and specific fields, measures, such as establishing and improving IPR protection rules in new technologies, new industries, new business forms and new models, are proposed in the Guideline. As far as stimulating innovation and development, it is clarified in the Guideline to strengthen the cultivation of patent-intensive industries, and establish a patent-intensive industry survey mechanism.

Need for high-quality development to be met

The Guideline specifies goals that by 2025,remarkable results should be achieved in the construction of an IP power, IPR protection should be stricter, social satisfaction should reach and maintain at a high level, the market value of IPRs should be more highlighted and brand competitiveness should be improved significantly. Patent-intensive industries should account for 13 percent of China’s GDP. The added value of copyright-intensive industries should account for 7.5 percent of the GDP. The total annual import and export volume for IPR use should reach 350 billion yuan and the number of high-value invention patents per 10,000 people should reach 12.  

Zhou Minliang, a research at the Industrial Economics Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said that IPR protection is an important indicator for measuring innovation. An IP power is a strong support for a strong country with innovation. The Guideline is conducive to further protecting and stimulating innovation, and it plays a positive role in the high-quality development of China’s economy.

Innovation vitality to be further spurred

Recently, the 2020 National Bulletin of Science and Technology Expenditures released by the National Bureau of Statistics indicated that in 2020, expenditures for enterprise research and experimental development (R&D) reached 1.86738 trillion yuan, up 10.4 percent year on year. They accounted for 76.6 percent of the national R&D expenditures, contributing to 77.9 percent of the national growth.

Zhou believes that it is requisite for achieving high-quality development to improve IPR protection and prevent the outcomes of innovators from being pirated. The Guideline guides the whole society to foster an atmosphere of respecting labor and innovation, which is conducive to exerting the role of market in resource allocation, and incentives for innovation, and improving the international competitiveness of China’s economy.