For regulating the management and improving efficiency of the fund of special fund for international scientific and technological cooperation and exchange, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Science and Technology jointly released Administration Measure on Special Fund for International Scientific and Technological Cooperation and Exchange recently.

The Measure makes detailed regulation on the achievement and IPR from the cooperation project specially funded by State finance, saying that the IPR management and protection in the specially-funded projects should abide the principle of equality, mutual benefit, honoring to agreement and keeping promise, and observe Chinese laws and regulations on IP as well as all international conventions, treaties or agreements China has signed. The Ministry of Science and Technology will make all issues clear in its project agreement with the contractor, such as concrete target, way of IPR protection, IPR ownership of Chinese side in the project as well as the IPR management duty of contractor.

In line with the Measure, project managing unit should have either clear article on IPR in the agreement or a separated IPR agreement with foreign companies, clarifying the ownership and share of benefit of IPR, responsibility of breach of IPR contract and dispute resolution procedure during the cooperation, and has to submit the contract to the Ministry for record.

The part of IPR achieved during the specially-funded project and belonged to Chinese party can be granted to contractor according the Regulation on IPR Management Achieved in State-Level Scientific Research Project, provided the IPR does not involve national security, national interests, social and public interests as well as others already listed in the agreement.

The document also makes regulation on the key areas and expense coverage of the special IP fund, as well as the application method for the fund and approval procedure, budget making and approval, and execution of the budget. If part of the budget comes from foreign party, the budget notes should provide information about the relation between the Chinese and foreign investment and research as well as IPR.

The Ministry of Science and Technology will build up a database for better managing the specially-funded projects, and their achievements and IPRs will be also listed into the database.