Efforts to protect IPR ramped up

Development targets set for next 15 years to make China a global player

China's protection of intellectual property rights will be much stricter by 2025, with a high level of public satisfaction and greater market value of IPR, according to a development plan made public on Wednesday.

The plan for developing IPR, jointly released by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, China's Cabinet, sets goals and maps out a number of tasks on protecting IPR and developing relevant industries in the next 15 years.

According to the document, the added value of patent-intensive industries is expected to account for 13 percent of GDP by 2025, and the added value of the copyright industry will make up 7.5 percent of GDP by that time.

The number of high-value invention patents is expected to reach 12 per 10,000 people by 2025.

By 2035, China's IPR competitiveness will rank among the top in the world, with a completed IPR system, prosperous growth in IPR-driven innovation and a better social environment for an IPR culture, it said.

International cooperation featuring all-around and multilevel participation in global IPR governance will be basically shaped, while the country will be established as a world-class IPR power with Chinese characteristics, it added.

To reach the goals, the plan sets out several key requirements and tasks. These include building an IPR protection system that supports a world-class business environment, establishing an IPR market operation mechanism that encourages innovation, building a public IPR service system that is convenient and beneficial to people and stepping up participation in global IPR governance.

Laws on patents, trademarks and copyright as well as regulations on protecting new varieties of plants should be amended in a timely manner and legislation introduced for some new industries, including big data and artificial intelligence.

Judicial authorities should also improve the professionalism of IPR-related hearings and dispense harsher criminal punishment to infringers, the report said.

Considering many IPR-related cases involve advanced technologies, the document said it is a necessity to build a team of technical investigators to improve the quality of case handling.

Basic information related to IPR should also be made further open to public, it said, while administrators should streamline the process of reviewing patent and trademark applications by making use of new technologies.