As the 2021 China IP Publicity Week was approaching, a press conference on intellectual property protection of Heilongjiang Province in 2020 was held at the Information Office of the Government of Heilongjiang Province. Director Liu Chunyan of the provincial IP office spoke at the conference.

According to Liu, a total of 28,475 patents were granted in the whole province in 2020, a year-on-year growth of 42.45%. 27,336 valid invention patents were obtained, and the number of invention patents owned by each 10,000 heads of population stood at 7.245, an increase of 1.14 times compared with the number by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan period, which means that the province achieved the goal of 6.7 set in the nation's 13th Five-Year Plan 7 months ahead of schedule (the goal was reached in May 2020). During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, three invention patents registered by ZBD Pharmaceutical, Harbin Institute of Technology and Northeast Petroleum University won golden medals of China Patent Awards. In 2020, the whole province received 93,939 trademark applications and 58,824 trademark registrations, and there were over 320,000 registered trademarks in total, an increase of 1.8 times compared with the number by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan period. The number of registered trademarks per 10,000 market players was 1,305, and there were 103 famous trademarks in the province. The accumulative number of registered GI trademarks was 100, and a total of 73 GI protection products were approved. The amount of newly pledged IP financing reached RMB 799 million yuan, accomplishing the goal of RMB 650 million yuan set in the 13th Five-Year Plan.

The provincial IP office organized a series of campaigns to strengthen IP protection, including the GI trademark protection campaign in Autumn and the "Blue Sky" campaign, and conducted oversight on IP service agencies through inspections by randomly selected inspectors of randomly selected entities and the public release of inspection results. Efforts were made to strengthen cooperation in patent law enforcement in the field of e-commerce, and all the enterprises with GI trademarks changed the original marks to the new versions. IP organs across the province handled 78 patent infringement cases. The China (Heilongjiang) Intellectual Property Protection Center was completed and has been put into use now, which is the sixth one in the whole country and the first one in the three provinces in Northeast China of its kind.

Efforts were redoubled by the people's courts in enhancing punitive damages on double patenting and bad faith infringements, in a bid to provide comprehensive protection for IPR owners. In 2020, IP-related first instance civil cases accepted and concluded by local courts were 1,585 and 1,508 cases respectively, a concluding rate of 95.1%; IP-related criminal cases accepted and concluded were 49 and 38 cases respectively; IP-related administrative cases accepted and concluded were 7 and 6 cases respectively. Public security organs launched a special campaign codenamed "Kunlun 2020" as well as another 100-day campaign focusing on cracking down on IP violations.(Translated from CNIPA Website Chinese Version)