The theme of the World Intellectual Property Day for the year of 2011 is "Designing the Future". As I understand it, the theme means designing for the long-term development while focusing energy on the short-term one. As a professional magazine devoted to covering IP, we have great expectations for 2011 and the years to come.

In 2011, we are continuously trying our best to offer readers timely reports, comments and in-depth analyses, while improving the arrangement of columns and the overall appearance of the magazine. We sincerely hope every single page, down to the last detail, makes choosing our journal a pleasant experience for our readers.

Thanks to the support of our readers and some professional organizations, China IP, in cooperation with China Daily, successfully launched the China Daily IPR website channel. This will vastly expand our ability to extend IP coverage. The channel will play a part in publicising China's IP policies, and help English speakers unfamiliar with IP developments in China gain access to some "inside stories" from an impartial perspective. It is not a global platform for propaganda, but one for exchanging and sharing experiences and values, especially those in IP practices.

When the IPR Channel was put on line, the First New Year Forum on China's Intellectual Property was opened at the same time. We were delighted by the enthusiasm and positive response of all participants, and felt stronger incentives for presenting our readers an ever better magazine.

IP transactions will be a hot topic for 2011. The whole industry, and the society at large will attach importance to the deals in IP, patents in particular, together with the realization of their value. With this background, we happily offer our readers a series of reports on the First Patent Auction by the Institute of Computing Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Through the reports, we will lead readers to where the auction was held, distinguish the patent auction from others, explain the auction results, and attempt to paint a picture of the prospect of future patent auctions.