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President stresses that measures are on a par with safeguarding innovation The high level of attention the central leadership attaches to the
protection of intellectual property rights shows that they have a
significant role in both domestic development as well as the current
international situation, said a leading expert in the field. An article by President Xi Jinping on comprehensively strengthening
the protection of IPR and stimulating the vitality of innovation to
foster a new development paradigm was published on Monday in this year's
third issue of Qiushi Journal, a flagship magazine of the Communist
Party of China Central Committee. Innovation is the primary driving force behind development, and
protecting IPR is equal to protecting innovation, Xi stressed in the
article, the content of which was delivered by him at a group study
session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in
November. Ma Yide, an intellectual property professor at Zhongnan University of
Economics and Law, said, "Domestically, innovation has become the first
productive force due to the requirement of high-quality economic
development and the reform of industrial technology. As President Xi
said, protecting IPR means protecting innovation. Therefore, making more
efforts in IPR protection is the priority in our development." "Strengthening IPR protection, especially in terms of legal
protection, also shows to the world that we reject IPR infringements and
protect the rights of innovators and intellectual property right
holders," Ma added. In the article, Xi called for a stronger and more efficient legal
system of IPR protection, as IPR protection matters to the modernization
of China's governance system and capacity, high-quality development,
people's happiness, opening-up and national security. Xi also stressed legislation on geographical indications and business
secrets, calling for research and a draft of IP-related lawsuit
specifications, noting that criminal and administrative punishments for
IPR violators should be intensified. Meanwhile, IPR protection in new businesses and technologies,
including big data, artificial intelligence and genetics, must also be
increased, the article said, calling for innovation in IP-related case
hearings and the optimized handling of cases. To better protect IPR, a national-level Intellectual Property Court
was opened in January 2019 as a division of the Supreme People's Court.
It deals with civil and administrative appeal cases on patents and
advanced technologies. By the end of 2020, it had dealt with more than
4,000 such cases. "Some of the cases have become benchmarks in safeguarding IPR and
promoting high-tech innovation," said Zhu Li, deputy chief judge of the
IP Court. These cases covered industries including medicine,
telecommunications, animal genetics, network cabling, large machinery,
smart input methods and computer software, according to Zhu. "The court has been playing a bigger role in strengthening legal
protection of IP rights by improving the efficiency and quality of
challengeable IP-related technical cases," he added. Zhu said many technical IP-related cases had been resolved more
quickly over the past two years because the new division streamlined the
appeal process by allowing litigants to bypass provincial courts and
appeal to it directly. This means that litigants, who are unhappy with rulings made by
intermediate courts at city or prefecture level, or by other specialized
courts, can appeal directly to the top court instead of first appealing
to a high court at the municipal or provincial level. "Such a streamlined process not only improves the efficiency of case
hearings, but has also unified the trial criteria, as it prevents
inconsistencies in handling complicated technical disputes nationwide,"
Zhu added. Besides the national-level IP court, the country has four
intermediate-level courts specializing in IP in Beijing, Shanghai and
Guangdong and Hainan provinces. Furthermore, laws on patents, copyrights and trademarks have also
been amended in recent years, with harsher punishments for IP violators
and higher compensation for IP owners. All of these measures are to implement the requirements from the
central leadership to improve the legal protection system for IPR, Ma
said. Action plan China unveiled an action plan on Sunday to guide the building of a
high-standard market system in the next five years, in which IPR
protection has also been given priority and is regarded as a key way to
improve the socialist market economy and embrace a "dual-circulation"
development paradigm. The plan stipulates that several IP-related guidelines should be
promoted or drafted, such as those on handling civil disputes on
business secrets and tackling patent cases on drug listing approval. The plan says that people who infringe others' IPR maliciously or for a long time will face harsher punishment. Procedures to apply for trademarks or patents as well as the time to
review these applications must be optimized and shortened, it said. Additionally, rules on patent protection on medicines and IPR protection in e-commerce industries will also be drawn up.
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