The competition of the future world is a competition for IPRs, said Premier
Wen Jiabao. Based on this insight, China has increased its financial support to
IPR-related work.
The State Council, or the central government, has decided to hold regular
meetings to deal with IPR-related issues, and the National People's Congress,
the top legislature, has put implementation of patent law at top of the agenda
for its law enforcement inspection work.
IPR protection must precede innovation, said Ren Zhengfei, president of
Huawei Technologies, which is well known for IT research and development in
China.
"Otherwise, the real victims of bad IPR protection will be Chinese companies
with innovation potentials, instead of their western counterparts," Ren said.
He explained that western enterprises will be free from infringement as their
core intellectual property rights are securely protected in their home
countries.
However, many problems on IPR-related issues still remain to be solved, said
Zhao Chunshan of the CIPS. The most pressing issue is that both the quantity and
quality of China's domestic intellectual property rights are not gratifying.
The problem of lacking intellectual property rights has become more
outstanding as China's economy has grown stronger in recent years, Zhao said.
Statistics with the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPC) show that only
2,000-plus Chinese enterprises, or every three out of 10,000 enterprises, have
proprietary IPRs.
Some Chinese enterprises are highly dependent on foreign-patented
technologies. Without the patents for core technologies, Chinese manufacturers
have to pay 20 percent of the price of each domestically-made mobile phone, 30
percent of each computer and about 20 to 40 percent of each numerical control
machine tool to foreign patent holders.
To address this problem, China is trying to encourage enterprises, research
institutes and universities to produce patented technologies and products. China
aims at ranking fifth in the world in terms of the domestically-produced
invention patents by 2020, according to China's new 15-year plan for scientific
and technological innovation and development, released by the State Council in
February.
The Chinese government's inadequate punishment for IPR violation looms as
another problem in IPR protection. The price IPR violators have to pay is still
low in China, making it of poor deterrent value, said Gong Li, chairman of
Accenture Company, greater China. Gong also suggested Chinese public awareness
of IPR protection needs improving.
"The Chinese government is trying to solve those problems," said Li
Dongsheng, deputy director of the State Administration of Industry and Commerce.
"We will also try to improve public awareness and motivate the whole society to
make concerted efforts alongside the government at IPR protection."
To improve public awareness of IPR protection, China will set up claim
centers in 50 cities this year to handle domestic complaints on the infringement
of intellectual property rights, according to the Ministry of
Commerce.
