Is there any solution when researchers are unwilling, unable or even afraid to commercialize their innovations? Can enterprises find a fitting patent to commercialize?The Special Action Plan for Patent Commercialization and Utilization (2023-2025) was recently approved at an executive meeting of the China's State Council. Its general gist covers that as of 2025, a raft of high-value patents will realize commercialization; universities and research institutes will see their patent commercialization rates hike significantly and the total value of patent technology contracts nationwide will hit 800 billion yuan; a slew of enterprises potent in hardcore technology and loaded with solid patents can grow big and strong, IP edge in some key sectors may materialize at speed and the total value of evaluated and recorded patent-intense products shall exceed a trillion yuan.
The State Council Information Office held a State Council Policies Briefing and unveiled the Plan in Beijing recently. "The China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) has been earnestly boosting patent commercialization and utilization, and assisting the smooth and healthy development of the economy, which has harvested great results. In the same time, there still exist some lingering issues like low patent commercialization rate, insufficient compensation, dysfunctional mechanism, service mismatched with the actual need of enterprises and incomplete service system. The enactment of the Plan aims to wage a three-year special action, revolving around two aspects in upgrading patent quality and enhancing policy inspiration. There are measures for removing obstacles, spurring motivation and activating market to solve the quality issue of patent commercialization and utilization from the source, the innovator motivation issue and the market channel issue. Hopefully the efficiency of patent commercialization and utilization can be elevated to better boost the quality development of the economy," CNIPA Commissioner Shen Changyu elaborated.
Patent commercialization aims to serve the industry
The Plan highlights patent commercialization's role in serving the real economy. Some of the requirements are concentrating patent commercialization and utilization on serving the real economy and facilitating patent commercialization by rearranging the stock of patents owned by universities and research institutes and cultivating and promoting patent-intense products.
As of September 2023, Chinese universities were in possession of 767,000 invention patents while research institutes owned 220,000. The combination of their patents accounted for 25.3% of all valid invention patents owned by Chinese users. According to Shen, in an effort to advance patent commercialization and utilization at universities and research institutes, tasked by the Plan, the CNIPA will mobilize universities and research institutes nationwide to select those patents with potential market value, establish connections between sellers and buyers, promote a scheme covering application, follow-up and feedback and strive to blanket all their valid patents pending commercialization by the end of 2025.
Boosting patent commercialization and utilization, mining patent value to depth and developing patent-intense industry are a strategic task advancing high-quality development. "Recently, the CNIPA has sponsored the development of the National Patent-Intense Product Recordation and Evaluation Platform (Trial), formulated a collective standard to evaluate this sort of products from enterprises and commanded the recordation of patent products at local level. As of now, a total of over 28,000 patent products with a combined value of 3.5 trillion yuan from over 12,000 enterprises have been evaluated and recorded at the Platform, " CNIPA Deputy Commissioner Lu Pengqi revealed that the administration will strengthen coordination with relevant agencies, accelerate the evaluation of patent-intense products, improve the working system, add more support, and enhance demonstration and guidance to potently prop up the rapid construction of a modern industry system.
Empowering key sectors for robust and efficient growth
The Plan highlights taking advantage of the collective strength of the entire country and the sheer size of its market. Specific requirements include empowering IP of key sectors for robust and efficient growth, cultivating high-value patent portfolios, developing and operating patent pools of key sectors, and encouraging patent open source in cutting-edge technology sectors like the future industries.
Private tech SME is a major force for cultivating new development momentum and advancing high-quality development. The Plan lists "Using patent commercialization to boost SMEs' growth" as one of the key tasks. According to Shen, the CNIPA will work closely with other agencies to put it into action. In terms of stimulating technology supply, patent open license will be used to speed up patents of universities and research institutes to be transferred to SMEs for commercialization. In terms of financial aid, financing through pledging IPRs as collaterals will be enhanced to increase the size of loans and make financing more convenient. When it comes to service support, patent transfer service will be improved. Accurate matching of patent buyers (tech SMEs) and sellers will be made. A high-standard IP market system and a sound ecology for patent commercialization will be developed.
Strengthening patent commercialization and utilization is the inherent need for boosting high-quality development and an essential measure to advance the construction of an IP powerhouse country. Under the Plan's guidance, regions and agencies are expected to speed up drafting their own implementing agendas, bolster work coordination among them and facilitate transformation of innovations to actual productivity to the maximum extent.