China to improve laws to support IPR development

BEIJING -- China will improve laws to promote high-quality development of intellectual property rights (IPR), a senior intellectual property official said Thursday.

China will timely amend laws on patents, trademarks and copyright as well as regulations on protecting new varieties of plants, said Shen Changyu, head of the National Intellectual Property Administration, introducing a recently released plan on the country's IPR development for the next 15 years at a press conference.

China will speed up the legislation for special fields such as commercial secrets protection, geographical indications and integrated circuits layout designs and for new industry formats, including big data, artificial intelligence and genetic technology, Shen added.

A total of 549,000 technology contracts with a turnover of 2.8 trillion yuan (430 billion U.S. dollars) were signed in the national technology market last year, of which 186,000 technology contracts involved intellectual property rights, with the turnover reaching 1.1 trillion yuan, said Huang Shengbiao, an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology, at the press conference.

China will accelerate the building of a national technology transfer system and enhance the service capacity for the transformation of IPR and scientific and technological achievements, Huang added.

The added value of patent-intensive and copyright industries is expected to account for 13 percent and 7.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2025, respectively, according to the relevant plan.

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