February 6 witnessed the convening of a work conference of the SIPO system and its IP service centers in Ningbo, Zhejiang province. The IP protection leading office under the SIPO announced its plan about how to carry out IP protection and publicity of IP service centers, and required that meticulous organization and coordination should be made with priority to publicity, and the publicity level of IP protection be upgraded. With the "IP protection net project" as platform and the "12312" hot line for IP service, publicity work should be done in a dimensional and multi-angle way in regard to China's IP protection laws, regulations, policies and achievements, and, at the same time, the IP service center's influence at home and abroad should be expanded overall so as to bring about a sound situation for IP protection. 

Secretary-general to the State Rectification and Regulation Office (China State IP Protection Office) expressed the viewpoint that, with the daily increasing level of IP protection worldwide, and the growing role of IP in the development of world economies and sciences and technologies, many countries have come to understand that future competition over the world is essentially economic competition, which focuses on competition in science and technology, which is, in the last analysis, competition in intellectual property. 

With the growing advent of new technology and knowledge, new categories of intellectual property follow up, accordingly, the scope of modern IP protection has extended from conventional patent, trademark and copyright to include plural subjects such as compute software, integrated circuit, plant specie, business secret and biotechnology. This shows there is a long way to go for IP protection. 

Participating experts showed their affirmative view on the prospect of intellectual property in China. They commonly hold that, with the continuous improvement of laws on intellectual property and the generalization of them, the concept of intellectual property strikes roots in the hearts of people, the awareness of the whole society in respect of IP protection is obviously enhanced, people began to attend to intellectual property and protect their own legal rights and interests by virtue of relevant laws. Intellectual property activity has begun to develop in China.   

(People's Daily Online)