Nearing the 21st World Intellectual Property Day, Fujian Provincial Intellectual Property Office will launch the IP Publicity Week event focusing on "Enhancing Intellectual Property Protection Comprehensively, Striving to Build the New Development Paradigm" from April 20 to 26, in a bid to thoroughly implement the guiding principles in General Secretary Xi Jinping's important speech made when inspecting Fujian as well as his important instructions on IP work.
As a highlight of this event, the Provincial Leading Group Office for IP Work recently released a white paper titled Intellectual Property Development and Protection of Fujian Province in 2020 (hereinafter referred to as the "white paper").
According to the white paper, Fujian saw a remarkable rise in the level of IP creativity as well as IP quality and efficiency in 2020. In the whole year, a total of 180,399 patent applications were handled across the province, 35,161 of which were invention patents, and the number of patents granted was 145,929, 10,250 of which were invention patents. The whole province held 50,756 valid invention patents in total, and the number of invention patents owned by each 10,000 heads of population stood at 12.775. The rate of electronic applications for patents reached 99.58%. A total of 504,603 new trademark applications were filed, 324,548 new trademarks were registered, and there were accumulatively 1,654,940 registered trademarks; 64 new GI trademarks were registered, and the accumulative number of registered GI trademarks was 561. The number of works registered was 163,786. And the number of new plant varieties granted was also rising.
IP protection was strengthened. The General Office of the CPC Fujian Provincial Committee and the General Office of Fujian Provincial People's Government issued the Implementation Plan of Fujian Province for Strengthening Intellectual Property Protection. The "Iron Fist" special campaign was carried out across the province. A total of 5,344 IP-related administrative enforcement cases were registered and handled, including 2,585 cases of patent disputes and 2,759 cases of passing off patents. A total of 1,710 trademark violation cases were registered and investigated, total value involved reached 31.534 million yuan, and the fines and forfeits amounted 30.362 million yuan. The Provincial Copyright Bureau, Provincial Public Security Department, Provincial Cyberspace Administration and Provincial Communications Administration jointly launched the "Sword at the Internet 2020" special campaign to crack down on cyber infringements, and 52 cases were investigated in total. Fuzhou Customs took IPR protection measures for 2,473 times, and a total of 83,251 pieces of goods and items entering into or exiting from China that were suspected of infringing upon IPRs were detained, the value of which was 804,000 yuan; Xiamen Customs investigated a total of 693 cases suspected of infringing upon IPRs, with 4.72 million pieces of suspicious goods being seized in the process of entry into or exit from China. The people's courts in the whole province totally accepted 12,948 IP-related cases, and 12,959 cases were concluded. Procuratorial organs totally approved the arrest of 119 suspects involved in 70 cases of IPR infringements, and brought 263 public prosecutions against 427 persons. Public security organs totally registered and investigated 2,539 criminal cases of infringements and counterfeits.
More dividends were gained from IP utilization. The provincial IP office made efforts to cultivate major and core high-value patents and develop patent portfolios. It totally accepted the first batch of 60 industrial high-value patent portfolio reserve projects and validated 87 more enterprises with IP advantages. 44 patents won the Provincial Patent Awards and 16 won the 21st China Patent Awards. The "Navigator Program" was launched with the aim of enhancing industrial competitiveness in IP, the "Zhichuang Zhongguo" APP provided roadshow opportunities for the innovation and entrepreneurship projects of more than 40 enterprises, with more than 1 billion yuan being financed, and the total amount of IP pledge financing reached 9.2 billion yuan. 43 enterprises were approved in the IP utilization pilot project for industrial enterprises launched by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The IP public service system was more optimized. The "Zhichuang Fujian" IP public service platform was extended to cover the whole province. So far, nearly 100 domestic and foreign medium and high-end professional service organizations have established offices in Fujian. 12 functional service zones, 4 sub-platforms and 13 workstations have been established, and more than 4,000 IP specialists are available to provide IP-related full-cycle, full-chain and full-field services for citizens. Trademark applications can be handled online in the whole province. The Fujian Sub-center of Beijing Patent Examination Cooperation Center under CNIPA has clustered more than 700 high-quality professionals as well as relevant high-end resources to strongly promote talent aggregation and the development of service industry in the high-tech zone. The office also launched the "Blue Sky" campaign against unscrupulous patent attorney acts, and conducted oversight on IP service agencies through inspections by randomly selected inspectors of randomly selected entities and the public release of inspection results. In addition, efforts were stepped up to push the pilot reform of approving the use of dedicated GIs, and totally 6 batches of 164 enterprises were approved to use the dedicated marks. 1,231 GI product enterprises passed the examination and approval to change for the dedicated marks of CNIPA.
Comprehensive influence of IP was expanded. During the 3rd Digital China Summit, focusing on "data empowerment drives targeted IP public service", Fujian demonstrated its innovative products like the online-offline integrated IP public service platforms of "Zhichuang China" and "Zhichuang Fujian", the Big Data Center for Industrial Navigation of Independent Intellectual Property Competitiveness of Fujian Province, as well as the the network monitoring on patents throughout the nine cities and one district. Efforts were made to extensively pool wisdom by holding the symposium to collect opinions on IP protection and utilization during the 14th Five-Year Plan period; the Fujian-Taiwan Round Table on Intellectual Property was also held to continuously expand the scope of IP exchanges and communication between the two places. 50 sessions of remote training courses were carried out, covering 47,000 people. More than 60 sessions of publicity and training were conducted, attended by more than 8,200 people from more than 6,300 enterprises. More than 550 enterprises had access to the patent database service and 1,184 enterprises were assisted to pass the standard implementation certification and obtained relevant certificates. "Xuexi Qiangguo", Toutiao, Douyin, WeChat, Weishi, Weibo and other new media were used for targeted publicity, the overall clicks of the copyright column on Toutiao reached 32.96 million times, and clicks of short videos 1.902 million times.(Translated from CNIPA Website Chinese Version)