China has demonstrated strong capability inthe international patent sector, with the number of patent filings expandingyear-on-year and Chinese enterprises making world leading investments inR&D, greatly boosting the country's tech-driven economic transformation,National Business Daily reported.

Nearly 59,000 patents were filed by Chinain 2019 via the World Intellectual Property Organization, surpassing the totalfilings of the United States, which held the top spot for more than fourdecades.

In the main category of WIPO's system ofregistering international patents - the Patent Cooperation Treaty or PTC —Chinese telecom giant Huawei filed 4,411 applications, ranking first in theworld for three consecutive years.

Smart phone makers Oppo, display panelmanufacture BOE Technology and Pingan Technology Group also won spots in thetop 10 list of international patent filers for 2019. A total of 13 Chinesecompanies were ranked in the top 50, WIPO's data showed. Domestically, Chinesecompanies showed fierce competition in patent applications.

In 2019, the number of Huawei's patentfilings hit 4,510, while Sinopec and Oppo ranked second and third,respectively, with 2,883 and 2,614 applications. The tech giant maintained itsfirst place in the first half of 2020, filing 2,772 patents, followed by Oppo andBOE Technology, data from China State Intellectual Property Administrationindicated.

Apart from patent applications, investmentin R&D is also regarded as an indicator of a company's corecompetitiveness. EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard, an internationalreport by the European Commission, analyzed the top 2,500 enterprises in theworld by annual R&D investment.

The number of Chinese mainland companiesenrolled continued its upward trend for seven consecutive years, from 199 in2014 to 536 in 2020, surpassing that of the EU for the first time and rankingsecond in the world last year. With 16.71 billion euros in R&D, Huawei wonthird place in the ranking, following Alphabet and Microsoft.

In the 2020 top 100 list for R&Dinvestment globally, Chinese companies also took 10 spots, including Alibaba,Tencent, Baidu and ZTE, demonstrating China has played an indispensable role inworld technological research and development, said National Business Daily.

China saw an increase in patent filings,more efficient intellectual property services and stronger IP protection lastyear despite the novel coronavirus outbreak. There was notable growth inregistrations for the layout design of integrated circuits, the country’s topIP authority said on Friday.

The country granted 530,000 patents forinventions in 2020. It brought the total number of valid invention patents onthe Chinese mainland to 2.21 million, said Hu Wenhui, spokesman for theNational Intellectual Property Administration, at a virtual news conference.

The number of invention patents per 10,000people reached 15.8 last year. It "exceeded the annual target of 12 setfor the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20)", Hu said. In 2020, China granted 2.38million patents for utility models and 732,000 patents for industrial designs.

With NIPA, Chinese applicants filed 67,000patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty and made 7,553applications to register trademarks via the Madrid System, up 17.9 percent and16.1 percent year-on-year respectively. The increases "indicatestrengthened capabilities of Chinese companies to build an international IPportfolio", Hu said.

IP examination procedures were streamlinedlast year. The time needed to examine applications for high-value patents wasshortened to 14 months. The average time needed to examine invention patentapplications was cut to 20 months and that for trademark registrationapplications to four months.

On the protection front, enforcementofficials handled more than 42,000 patent infringement disputes throughadministrative adjudication last year. A recent survey showed that publicsatisfaction with IP protection in China scored 80.05 points out of 100, whichis a record high, according to Hu.

In 2020, China received 14,375 applicationsfor IC layout design registration, a year-on-year surge of 72.8 percent. Thefigure was 2,400 in 2016. The average annual growth rate over the past fiveyears was 57.1 percent, according to the administration. The growth can beattributed to the rapid development of the country’s IC industry and betterprotection for IC layout designs, said Ge Shu, head of strategic planning atNIPA.

Figures from the China SemiconductorIndustry Association show that China’s IC industry recorded double-digit growthin the first nine months of 2020. The industry’s sales topped 590.5 billionyuan ($91 billion) during the period, up 16.9 percent year-on-year. More than40 percent of sales came from the IC design sector.

Ge said more than 5,600 companies appliedto register IC layout designs last year, which was more than twice the figureof 2019.

"This indicates that more innovatorsset great store by the protection of technological innovations and are usingthe protection system for IC layout designs to protect their rights andinterests," Ge noted.

NIPA said the quality of invention patentsimproved over the past year. As of the end of 2020, China was home to 281,000invention patents that had remained valid for more than 10 years. The numberaccounts for 12.3 percent of the total and represents a year-on-year increaseof 1 percentage point.

Of the 246,000 Chinese companies with validinvention patents, 105,000 are high-tech enterprises. They own nearly 60percent of the valid invention patents of domestic companies, according to theadministration.

Last year, China received a greater numberof patent applications from countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative.

A total of 23,000 applications forinvention patents filed in China were from countries involved in the BRI. Theyrepresent an increase of 3.9 percent from 2019 and is higher than theyear-on-year growth in total foreign applications in China.

Among these countries, Singapore and SouthKorea recorded a marked increase in filings, up 21 percent and 4.4 percentyear-on-year respectively, according to the administration. The high level ofattention the central leadership attaches to the protection of intellectualproperty rights shows that they have a significant role in both domesticdevelopment as well as the current international situation, said a leadingexpert in the field.

An article by President Xi Jinping oncomprehensively strengthening the protection of IPR and stimulating thevitality of innovation to foster a new development paradigm was published onMonday in this year's third issue of Qiushi Journal, a flagship magazine of theCommunist Party of China Central Committee.

Innovation is the primary driving forcebehind development, and protecting IPR is equal to protecting innovation, Xistressed in the article, the content of which was delivered by him at a groupstudy session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in November.

Ma Yide, an intellectual property professorat Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, said, "Domestically,innovation has become the first productive force due to the requirement ofhigh-quality economic development and the reform of industrial technology. AsPresident Xi said, protecting IPR means protecting innovation. Therefore,making more efforts in IPR protection is the priority in our development."

"Strengthening IPR protection,especially in terms of legal protection, also shows to the world that we rejectIPR infringements and protect the rights of innovators and intellectualproperty right holders," Ma added.

In the article, Xi called for a strongerand more efficient legal system of IPR protection, as IPR protection matters tothe modernization of China's governance system and capacity, high-qualitydevelopment, people's happiness, opening-up and national security.

Xi also stressed legislation ongeographical indications and business secrets, calling for research and a draftof IP-related lawsuit specifications, noting that criminal and administrativepunishments for IPR violators should be intensified.

Meanwhile, IPR protection in new businessesand technologies, including big data, artificial intelligence and genetics,must also be increased, the article said, calling for innovation in IP-relatedcase hearings and the optimized handling of cases.

To better protect IPR, a national-levelIntellectual Property Court was opened in January 2019 as a division of theSupreme People's Court. It deals with civil and administrative appeal cases onpatents and advanced technologies. By the end of 2020, it had dealt with morethan 4,000 such cases.

"Some of the cases have becomebenchmarks in safeguarding IPR and promoting high-tech innovation," saidZhu Li, deputy chief judge of the IP Court.

These cases covered industries includingmedicine, telecommunications, animal genetics, network cabling, largemachinery, smart input methods and computer software, according to Zhu.

"The court has been playing a biggerrole in strengthening legal protection of IP rights by improving the efficiencyand quality of challengeable IP-related technical cases," he added.

Zhu said many technical IP-related caseshad been resolved more quickly over the past two years because the new divisionstreamlined the appeal process by allowing litigants to bypass provincialcourts and appeal to it directly.

This means that litigants, who are unhappywith rulings made by intermediate courts at city or prefecture level, or byother specialized courts, can appeal directly to the top court instead of firstappealing to a high court at the municipal or provincial level.

"Such a streamlined process not onlyimproves the efficiency of case hearings, but has also unified the trialcriteria, as it prevents inconsistencies in handling complicated technicaldisputes nationwide," Zhu added.

Besides the national-level IP court, thecountry has four intermediate-level courts specializing in IP in Beijing,Shanghai and Guangdong and Hainan provinces.

Furthermore, laws on patents, copyrightsand trademarks have also been amended in recent years, with harsher punishmentsfor IP violators and higher compensation for IP owners.

All of these measures are to implement therequirements from the central leadership to improve the legal protection systemfor IPR, Ma said.

China unveiled an action plan on Sunday toguide the building of a high-standard market system in the next five years, inwhich IPR protection has also been given priority and is regarded as a key wayto improve the socialist market economy and embrace a"dual-circulation" development paradigm.

The plan stipulates that several IP-relatedguidelines should be promoted or drafted, such as those on handling civildisputes on business secrets and tackling patent cases on drug listingapproval.

The plan says that people who infringeothers' IPR maliciously or for a long time will face harsher punishment.Procedures to apply for trademarks or patents as well as the time to reviewthese applications must be optimized and shortened, it said.

Additionally, rules on patent protection onmedicines and IPR protection in e-commerce industries will also be drawn up.

A basket of legal measures to strengthenprotection and development of intellectual property rights in Hainan Free TradePort was unveiled on Friday, as a move to help the country's southernmostisland province attract more investors and promote technological innovation.

The measures offer stronger IP protection,particularly in new businesses, major industries, core technologies and newplant varieties. These measures have been written into a guideline by theSupreme People's Court, and were released about two weeks after a new IP courtwas built in Hainan.

On Dec 31, the Hainan Free Trade PortIntellectual Property Court, which covers IP-related civil, administrative andcriminal cases across the province, opened to public.

The new court can not only improve thequality of IP case hearings and help create a better business environment, butalso help raise the province's international popularity and help it play abigger role in global economic cooperation and competition.

Based on the court, "we'll intensifythe IP protection in some key industries in the port, such as in crop breeding,medical technologies, digital creations as well as deep sea and deepspace," said Chen Wenping, vice-president of the Hainan High People'sCourt. "We'll also accelerate the making and improvement of rules onpatent protection in the sections."

He highlighted the IP protection in theport's technological innovations and new businesses, including those on bigdata, biology, pharmacy, block chain and artificial intelligence, regarding itas a crucial means to serve high-tech industrial development and upgrading.

Qin Fei, a professor from the faculty ofmaterials and manufacturing at Beijing University of Technology, lauded thejudicial measures given to Hainan in strengthening IP protection, "becausethe stricter guarantee we provide for patents and trademarks, the more overseasenterprises will be attracted to invest in the port".

The 30-article guideline also supportsHainan to establish a center to resolve international commercial disputes bydiversified means, including mediation, arbitration and litigation, accordingto Tao Kaiyuan, vice-president of the top court. She added the country'sInternational Commercial Court will also build a contact station in Hainan toguide the province to offer better legal services while handling relevantcases.