Open day highlights protection of IPR

China is encouraging more people to participate in the undertakings of intellectual property and strengthen IPR protection to create a vibrant environment for innovation.

The China National Intellectual Property Administration held an online open day on Tuesday, the 22nd World Intellectual Property Day, allowing interested people to learn about the development of IPR in the country.

Shen Changyu, head of the administration, said in an address that more attention is being paid to effective and in-depth opening-up, raising public awareness of IPR and participating in the formulation of IPR protection policies.

Last year, the central government released the Outline of Building an Intellectual Property Rights Powerhouse (2021-35) and the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Protection and Utilization of National Intellectual Property Rights (2021-25). Shen said opinions from all sectors of society were collected and over 10,000 people participated in the formulation of the document.

"IP undertakings should rely on openness to achieve better development. The administration is adapting to the development of society, and accelerating the research and formulation of IP protection rules for new fields and new formats such as big data, artificial intelligence and gene technology," he said.

According to the administration, both the quality and quantity of Chinese intellectual property continued to increase last year, with 696,000 invention patents authorized in 2021.

China has intensified the protection of IPR in recent years. Since 2019, the nation's top legislature has revised the Trademark Law, Patent Law and Copyright Law and established a punitive damages system with the highest international standards.

By last year, the administration had set up 25 IP protection centers and 22 branches for national overseas IP dispute response and guidance centers to reinforce the protection.

Last year, the centers investigated and dealt with 50,100 cases of patent and trademark disputes, handled 49,800 administrative adjudication cases on patent infringement disputes, accepted 64,800 cases of IP dispute mediation and deleted 1.2 million web links that had taken part in infringement.

Some 21,000 criminal cases for infringement and counterfeiting were investigated, and 38,000 suspects were arrested last year, in cases involving a total value of 9.53 billion yuan ($1.45 billion).

The first rights protection case in China, involving jubensha, a popular scripted group murder mystery role-play game, was heard in Hunan province in March. Changsha Xinmeng Animation Technology is the copyright owner of a jubensha script, which was created and published in March 2021.

The company found that Xiaoxin Department Store sold the electronic version of the game's script for 4.99 yuan on its online store, despite the cost to buy the original from Changsha Xinmeng Animation Technology being 528 yuan. The company filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement.

In March, the Tianxin District People's Court in Changsha, capital of Hunan, ordered the department store to compensate the plaintiff for economic losses and reasonable expenses amounting to 12,000 yuan.

The office of the inter-ministerial joint conference on IPR of the State Council issued a document in January that defined the key tasks and measures for IPR protection from 2021 to 2022, covering a total of 115 items in seven aspects and including strengthening the judicial oversight against monopolies and unfair competition.