A view of the Robot and Intelligent Hardware Intellectual Property Protection Center in Changzhou, east China’s Jiangsu province. (PHOTO: VCG)
By CAO Xiuying & CHEN Chunyou
The strong guarantee of dedicated efforts made in the intellectual property rights (IPR) protection field has allowed a growing number of research results with independent IPR to be produced in the fields of crewed space flight, lunar exploration and supercomputers.
China provides a variety of IPR protection services, including authorization review, legal protection, and research result transformation, said Shen Changyu, commissioner of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office on April 24.
Shen explained that CNIPA has initiated a project to enhance the quality of patents by providing prior review, centralized and delayed review on patents of key industries, and improving patent application efficiency of major research results.
In the fields of new energy, biomedicine and seed industry, specialists have been organized and dispatched to central state-owned enterprises, universities and research institutes to provide consulting services throughout the entire process of their innovation activities.
CNIPA has established many national IPR protection centers, with an aim to provide intellectual property administrative protection services to provincial level advantageous industries, including rapid preliminary review, and quick confirmation and protection of rights.
In terms of promoting the commercialization and application of research results with independent IPR, China supports the research institutes in establishing intellectual property operation agencies in such industries as new energy and 5G technology.
Moreover, the country also launched IP mortgage financing business, to help research teams secure capital and insurance using their IP assets. This has effectively expanded financing channels and solved financing problems for innovative entities.
Focusing on cutting-edge technologies, China has organized in-depth research and analysis of patents. A total of 13 national patent information service platforms have been developed for key industries, including rare earth, which provides valuable insights to achieve technological breakthroughs and optimize technological R&D plans.
"Overseas IPR dispute response guidance centers and sub-centers have been established nationwide, to carry out monitoring and early warning of overseas IPR risks, and help enterprises prevent overseas IPR risks and deal with related disputes," said Shen.
Based on national and IPR holders' needs, CNIPA will perfect the review policy, and improve the review quality and efficiency, while promoting the deep integration of the IPR chain with industrial, innovation and capital chains, added Shen.
The trio will conduct a series of experiments in fields such as life science, fluid physics, combustion science and materials science. Notably, this is the first time that fruit flies have been taken on a Chinese space mission as experimental subjects. What made scientists choose fruit flies? What experiment will they undergo?