IPR Daily Guide: Recently, the SIPO Party Leadership Group held a conference to discuss implementation of President Xi Jinping’s directives to strengthen IP protection as well as the central government’s policy to achieve stable and continuous development, to study new developments and to improve the quality of patent projects, and to put policy measures in place to further improve patent quality. The conference emphasized taking strong measures against low quality applications, targeting key fields and geographical areas, increasing regulatory efforts, putting together typical cases of abnormal patent application and disciplining applicants according to the law, as well as transferring suspected illegal acts to public security organs for investigation.

Recently, the SIPO Party Leadership Group held a conference to discuss implementation of President Xi Jinping’s directives to strengthen IP protection as well as the central government’s policy to achieve stable and continuous development, to study new developments and to improve the quality of patent projects, and to put policy measures in place to improve patent quality. Party Group deputy secretary and SIPO head Shen Changyu chaired the meeting and delivered a speech.

The meeting pointed out that since the 18^th National Congress and the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics, projects to improve patent quality have been on the rise, as well as the promotion of the development of intellectual property; high quality core patents in industries such as communications, aerospace, high-speed rail, nuclear energy, biomedicine, AI and others are a marker of this new era of China’s development.

The turnover of technology contracts involving patents, the amount of patent pledge financing, and the export amount of intellectual property rights fees continued to grow rapidly. However at the same time, the intellectual property field in China has faced deep contradictions and problems in individual regions, industries, enterprises, individuals and agencies had abnormal patent application behavior which not only wasted state resources but also disturbed normal processes. These inefficiencies must be dealt with and steps must be taken to promote high-quality development of the IP industry.

First, strengthen the learning and understanding of the 19^th Party Congress and Xi Jinping’s thought of new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics; implement instructions to strengthen creation, protection and application of intellectual property rights, place quality at the forefront of IP development, and improve results of employees of the IP system.

Second, clarify ideas on improvement of patent application quality. Clear up key points and identify contradictions in areas of application, agency, review, protection and use, accelerate the formation of high quality systems of standards, policy, statistics, and evaluation to support the development of a high quality system. Supervise and urge local improvement of relevant policies, avoid separation of tasks by levels simply to achieve set goals and increase supervision at every level.

Third, promote implementation of related policies, including "Procedures for Patent Quality Improvement Projects", "Several Provisions on Regulating Patent Application Behaviors", "Notice on Special Supervision of Patent Application Policies", "Notice on Further Improving the Quality of Patentes in 2018", etc., at the same time strengthening the constraints of system implementation to ensure the effectiveness of existing policies.

Fourth, enforce patent examination and authorization. Implement instructions of President Xi Jinping on improving the quality and efficiency of IP examinations, implementing the State Council’s “distribution service” reform on the deployment of the patent review cycle; improve the patent examination quality assurance system and business guidance system, and strengthen the construction of the team of examiners. Review capacity building, strengthen quality evaluation and review quality of authorized patents according to law.  

Fifth, cultivate high-value patents. Introduce support policies to promote the high-quality development of patents, actively encourage enterprises, universities and research institutes to establish high-value patent cultivation centers, strengthen the creation of key frontier technology intellectual property, and form more high-value patent portfolios. Improve the evaluation of patent awards, incentivizing through good examples.

Sixth, curb low-quality application and take strong measures against irregular applications. Intensify supervision over key fields and geographical areas, increasing regulatory efforts, putting together typical cases of irregular applications and disciplining applicants according to law, as well as transferring suspected illegal acts to public security organs for investigation.

Seventh, strengthen publicity and guidance. Widely publicize the country’s policy direction and effectiveness to improve quality of patents and patent applications, enhance quality awareness, guide the public to correctly use the patent system so as to create an environment conducive to further development of the system.

Office leaders He Hua, Gan Shaoning, He Zhimin, Liao Tao and Zhang Mao attended the meeting. Patent Office and other patent related department leaders also joined this meeting.

Source: IPR Daily (in Chinese)