When the patents can play the leading role?

 When the patents can play the leading role?

On March 26 Chang-Yu Shen the Secretary of SIPO Commissioner at the forum of the 30th anniversary of the promulgation of Patent Law of China. Pointed out to further develop the advantage of the patent system, actively guide and encourage enterprises, industries, regions to make patent portfolio well, in order to make the patents as "pillar" of the national economic development and directly contribute to GDP.

Recalling the 30-year development road of Chinese patents, just like the evaluation of Deputy Director of the State Press and Publication Administration Xiaohong Yan although it “started late, made great achievement.” According to records, in 1474, the first patent law .in the world which had the modern features was issued in Venice. In 1883, France and other 11 countries in Paris concluded the first international Patent Convention which is now still the most important - "Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property" (the "Paris Convention").In China the Patent Office wasn’t set up until 1980,"People's Republic of China Patent Law" was promulgated in 1985 and we joined the “Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property." Then, with the promoting of the national strategy of constructing independent innovation, China has gradually established a relatively complete IPR protection mechanism, the "Patent Law" has been revised three times, "Trademark Law" , "Copyright Law" and "The National Intellectual Property Strategy,” also been continually promulgated which has strategic meaning so that China is rapidly becoming the patent power. It is reported that, from 2011 on, the amount of invention patent applications accepted ranked the first in the world in our country which reached 13.094 million and 7.426 million pieces by the end of 2013,of which the domestic ones accounted the total of 89.0% and 89.7%.

The development of the patent system doesn’t only conform to the development trend of the adaptation of globalization of our country but also greatly boosts the development of the national economy. However, the patents don’t really stir up the national economy girders or become the mainstay of the national economy. Reportedly, the Professor from RUC Shoukang Guo said with deep feeling “For the moment, "China is only a big country called intellectual property, rather than power. Meantime there are still many problems which are necessary for the people who protect intellectual property rights to face”Why so?

First, the core competitiveness isn’t strong. Although, our patent applications and grants have reached the first in the world, the intentional, the original innovation, critical, landmark and practical ones are few and not enough instead the integrated, absorbed and re-innovation, utilitarian ones are more. The phenomenon is relatively common that many patents are used to mean themselves. The small number of world-famous trademarks has no influence and the piracy has not been completely eliminated.

Second, inadequate investment, It is said that due to the subsequent development of financial difficulties after the invention of hybrid rice, the father of Chinese rice Longping Yuan offered 42 kinds of patents among 44 of his to the foreign countries with free of charge,

Third, incomplete system, on the hand of the grassroots government departments are miserable to face the assessment index of the annual rising patents; From  the enterprise standpoint, their purpose of applying patents was for getting subsidize of science and technology project and patents, even most of them applied patents for declaring all kinds of high-tech enterprises and technological innovation platform ,truly less being used for development. As well as view from universities and research institutes, their purpose is for professional titles and levels or science and technology projects instead of producing, learning and research. View from universities and research institutes, the patents for professional titles and levels or science and technology projects are more than for producing, learning, and research. While from the college entrance examination system design point of view, the students want patents for their increase credit. Then on the hand of the patent agencies, they apply patents for the benefit which could make the vicious competition within the industry. All these results have made our patents quantity instead of high quality and not tight enough with the economic development, technological innovation and there is a large gap between social expectations and intellectual property protection. Infringement of intellectual property problem in some regions and areas are still relatively common, intellectual property protection has not been fully realized on the incentives for innovation and development.

However, how to make patent to provoke really the beam and the mainstay of the national economy? The writer thought of the following aspects:

A, Comprehensive upgrading, The government departments must optimize the policy-oriented and evaluation mechanism to enhance the quality of patent applications, to revise and improve the patent subsidy and reward policy, to further standardize the patent agents against their behavior of extracting patent grants and incentive funds. Totally we must improve the quality of the patents and set up a good environment for the patents. Enterprises should fill a vacancy on patent construction, while seize the high technology ground, with the patents.

B, promoting the usage, The Government should continue to implement the core patent industrialization plan, guide enterprises to develop core technology patent portfolio to promote the integration between the patents and economic, strategic new industries. On the other hand, to strengthen the use of patent technology by the cultivation of IPR advantageous enterprises, by promoting the hosting of IPR of SMEs and the development of them. The industry associations can organize the industry stronger companies jointly to apply patents, combination, making a patent distribution ,making  equipment ,doing  materials making products and offer a joint application together to get the competition of the international application and cross-licensing.

C, making the service system perfect, the first, to support the development of intellectual property agency. At this stage, our patent agents are famine. The industry vicious competition is very serious but the excellent patent agencies basically serve for the foreign companies. Thus, it seems very urgent to support the patent agencies as more as possible, to accelerate the training of patent agents and assistants, and improve their capacity building of them. The second, accelerating the transformation of the patent trading platform and enhancing the ability of intellectual property services; forming a patent agent, patent evaluation, information services and other one-stop service system to promote intellectual property commercialization and industrialization. The third, relying on science and technology incubator the invention entrepreneurial workshops can be built up so that the excellent invention patents can be incubated. The fourth, to actively promote the pledge loan, patent insurance and combine the intellectual property with the financial resources and make the IPR value, so that more technology-based SMEs can enjoy this policy to solve the financing problem.

Today, the patent development is in a golden period of development promising, only the government, enterprises, patent agencies can work hard together to make the same attention to both the quantity and quality of patents, both the use and protection, so that let the patents be cross beams and “pillars” of the national economic development to make the dream what we should change our country into a patent power from a large one, come true.