On April 20, Wuhan released a white paper on IP development in 2020, revealing the great headway of the city in IP creation, protection and utilization.
According to the white paper, Wuhan reported a total of 93,950 patent applications in 2020, a year-on-year growth of 21.86%, among which 34,635 were invention patents, a year-on-year growth of 4.32%; total number of patents granted was 58,923, a year-on-year growth of 50.09%, among which 14,667 were invention patents, a year-on-year growth of 24.78%. By December 31, 2020, the number of valid invention patents owned by each 10,000 heads of population stood at 51.87, and the number of international patent applications filed under the PCT was 1,389.
The number of trademark applications was 98,544, and the number of registered trademarks was 67,206, both showing an increasing trend; there were 335,600 registered trademarks in total, a year-on-year growth of 21.41%. The whole city held 101 well-known trademarks, 40 GI trademarks and 8 GI products, and 13 GI holders participated in Hubei Geographical Indications Conference & Brand Cultivation Innovation Competition.
Administrative IP protection was continuously strengthened. In 2020, 65 patent infringement dispute cases were handled, including 317 ones in e-commerce, all of which were concluded on schedule; 205 trademark infringement cases were investigated, and severe measures were taken against bad faith trademark registrations of "Huoshenshan" and "Leishenshan". Greater efforts were made to crack down on copyright infringements, and a total of 30 publication violation cases were filed and investigated, 3 cases were transferred to the public security organs to give criminal sanctions, and 32 entities were instructed to correct. Wuhan Customs realized the information-based operation of the whole process of IP-related case investigation, seizure, right determination, detention and disposal, with a total of 960,000 pieces of articles in 1,600 batches being seized for IP infringement.
Active efforts were made to push the construction of IP courts and a fair and efficient IP juridical protection mode was established. In 2020, the municipal and district-level courts totally accepted 5,222 IP-related cases and concluded 4,894 ones. The procuratorial organs earnestly handled the review and arrest of IP infringement cases, and the public security organs cracked a total of 26 cases of IP infringement and production and sales of fake and shoddy commodities and captured 59 suspects, with a total amount involved exceeding 30 million yuan. The IP dispute arbitration and mediation mechanism was improved, and the average number of days for mediation at Wuhan Intellectual Property Arbitration and Mediation Center was 25.
In 2020, the total amount of IP pledge loans of Wuhan was 1.095 billion yuan, exceeding 1 billion yuan for the first time, a year-on-year growth of 37.6%. The volume of transactions of technical contracts in the whole city amounted 94.23 billion yuan, ranking front among the sub-provincial cities.
The Specific Measures for Further Strengthening the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in Wuhan was released, in which 5 key tasks were defined and 27 measures were proposed, with the purpose of further improving the IP protection system and optimize the mechanism and effectively enhancing the city's IP protection capacity.
Furthermore, efforts were made to comprehensively strengthen the development of national-level IP centers. In December 2020, the First-Aid Center for Intellectual Property on Automobile and Parts of Wuhan passed the acceptance inspection of CNIPA, and the China (Wuhan) Intellectual Property Protection Center was inaugurated.
Efforts were also made to promote the construction of grassroots IP protection workstations. So far, 20 workstations of this kind have been approved, covering all the administrative divisions (including functional areas) under the jurisdiction of the city. Besides, the Wuhan Overseas Intellectual Property Protection Service and Guidance Center was established, a major move to accelerate the construction of the overseas IP protection mechanism.(Translated from CNIPA Website Chinese Version)