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Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province, which together hold nearly half of all invention patents in China, make one of the strongest engines for the nation's economy and will create a competitive industry chain using their respective advantages, said Wang Hong, chief of the Beijing intellectual property office.
He made the remarks at a ceremony on March 29 in Beijing to mark the establishment of an alliance for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regional IP development.
Contributing 10.9 percent of GDP in China, the region is more patent-intensive than the national average, Wang said. It is home to nearly 30 percent of all the nation's valid patents and 46 percent of valid invention patents.
"The region has seven patents for every 100 million yuan ($15.4 million) of GDP it generates, much higher than the national average, which is only 1.5," Wang said, adding that the industries, companies and service providers in the three areas need a matchmaking mechanism to allow their innovation resources to flow and complement each other.
In Beijing alone, companies and individuals filed 588,000 patent applications during the past five years, of which 323,000 were granted. However, Beijing is too small a market to "digest all the intellectual achievements", and needs to industrialize them in Tianjin and Hebei, said Wang.
Tianjin and Hebei have advanced industry bases, but fierce competition, too, he said. "They need to import intellectual achievements from Beijing to upgrade their industrial structure, and export their own achievements to Beijing to further expand their market."
Thanks to the new alliance, IP service projects in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province will be integrated in a resource pool to allow innovative companies in the region to share and cooperate.
The founding members of the alliance include 120 companies and 30 IP agencies.
The alliance plans to organize regular training programs on IP risks for companies in the region, focusing on the legal systems, policies and business environments in countries and regions that have had close trade ties with China in recent years.
Experts will also give one-on-one assistance to companies that experience challenges in overseas expansion.
During an inspection tour in Hebei in late March, Shen Changyu, commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office, called for a stricter regional IP protection environment by enhancing the cooperation between SIPO and the governments of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei to use innovation resources more efficiently and optimize industrial structure.
In February, the intellectual property office of Tianjin unveiled plans to seek coordinated IP service and protection in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region for the coming five years.
According to the plans, the office would share resources and information with its Beijing and Hebei counterparts. They would together build patent information analysis and pre-warning mechanisms and an IP trading platform with unified standards.
The plan also proposed coordinated law enforcement that includes cooperative case registration, trusted evidence collection, joint law enforcement operations and case transfers.
Forming the alliance was part of those plans.
zhangzhao@chinadaily.com.cn
