Growing patent filings show China's enhancing innovative capacity

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-10-20 16:15

GENEVA -- The mushrooming of China's patent applications in recent years reflects the country's enhancing innovative capacity, according to the top official from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

"The Chinese people have demonstrated their innovative prowess throughout history, offering the world technologies from acupuncture, compass, gunpowder to paper making, printing and ink," WIPO Director-General Francis Gurry told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"What we are seeing today is a growing tendency by the Chinese inventors to add value to their technologies and to generate economic benefit from them through astute and strategic use of the patent system," he said.

Gurry, an Australian national and a 23-year veteran of the WIPO, took over the top post of the UN agency on Oct. 1. Previously, he was WIPO deputy director-general overseeing patents and the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

According to the official, there has been a boom in patent filings in Northeast Asia over the past 20 years, most notably in China and the Republic of Korea, which have emerged as major industrial economies.

The latest WIPO figures show that in 2006, applicants from China filed a total of 128,850 patent applications, a 32.1-percentincrease from the previous year. Between 2000 and 2006, Chinese residents increased their share of total worldwide patent filings from 1.8 percent to 7.3 percent.

"Patent applications are widely recognized as an indicator, although imperfect, of inventive activities at a country level," Gurry said.

The value of patent applications as an indicator of inventive activity is that they are easily measurable and contain detailed technical and business information that can be used to understand innovation trends, he added.

As to major factors that lead to China's fast increase in patent applications, Gurry highlighted firm government support and a favorable policy environment.

"The support of the Chinese government and its commitment to intellectual property through the provision of a well-functioning patent system and patent office is undoubtedly a factor in the increased patent filings in China," he said.

The official also praised China's long-term reform and opening policies, which have "undoubtedly promoted the country's progress in science and technology."

"China adopted a Patent Law as early in the process of reform and opening as in 1984, a clear indication of the importance that it attached to the development of the technological infrastructure and the technological progress as a means of improving economic and social welfare," he said.

Gurry added that the Chinese government has made "exemplary" efforts in recent years to improve the protection of intellectual property (IP) rights.

"There is unevenness, naturally, in the implementation and take-up of IP across a country as large and diverse as China, but the legislative and policy frameworks are outstanding," he said.