After the fresh autumn rain, the 798 Art Zone welcomes another sunny morning. Located in Chaoyang District, Beijing, this industrial design and arts area has been attracting a large number of enterprises and promoting the development of relevant markets. In the completed industry chain of design (R&D), manufacturing, sales, exhibition and trade, intellectual property right plays a very important role.

"Intellectual property has become an important element of cultural and creative industry, especially in design services. It has developed to be the continuous power enhancing the core competitiveness of enterprises and regions." In a recent visiting, SIPO Commissioner Tian Lipu stressed that lifting the level of cultural and creative industry and upgrading design service industry, intellectual property is acting and will make a big difference.

Turning Innovation Wheel

There are three huge red dinosaur status standing in front of  Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) - the landmark architecture of 798 Art Zone. In addition to a total area of 8,000 square meters of exhibition area, UCCA gets an increasingly popular art derivative market. "This is the work of designer Sui Jianguo." Xue Mei, CEO of UCCA said to CIP News Reporter, showing the red dinosaur models for sale. "Intellectual property is the key of Art and Design industry. Without it, no design can secure its market value." According to Xue Mei, as the establisher of limited edition artwork operation pattern and the promoter of China's new design, UCCA Art Shop is committed to promoting original contemporary artworks and products with a forward-looking. The number of its co-designers has increased to nearly 60 from 10 in the beginning.

Also located in the 798 Art Zone, +86 International Designer Product Concept Shop is engaged in design product business through cooperating with a number of top international design brands and extraordinary local brands. In its nearly 400 square meters space, you can easily find thousands of different types of products, including creative furniture, tableware, lamps, stationery, jewelry, gifts, etc.. "Its a mature and efficient business model, enables people to enjoy the creative products from all over the world without going abroad, to truly acknowledge, understand and love Chinese designs. Meanwhile, +86 has been constantly tapping local design potentials and strengthening its innovation capability. It will eventually build famous Chinese design brands and enhance China's international image of design." Chi Wei, General Manager of +86 said, that while local design products expanding their brand value, design services and products manufacture will be integrated and develop into a higher level. Supported by strong brand value, product manufacture will gradually get rid of the low-end image of imitation and processing and eventually made the leapfrog development from "Made in China" to "Created in China".

Building Design City

According to an official in charge of the 798 Art Zone, it was listed as one of the first cultural and creative industry concentrated areas in 2006 by Beijing Municipal Government. Towards to the target of being international, high-end, fashionable and industrialized, the Art Zone has been always insisting on unified planning, taking care of operating, exploiting the advantages of agglomeration, creating the design industry chain and building the technical and copyright protection service platform. "Design service is an important segment of cultural and creative industry. We have the unique advantage and conditions. As the intellectual property protection environment keeps improving, the creativity of the art zone would be greatly improved in the future," said the official.

In the year of 2012, Beijing was approved as the world's 12th "Design City" by UNESCO.  With the rapid development of design services, Chaoyang District becomes the core region. "The cultural and creative industry concentrated area, represented by 798 Art Zone, has grown into a pillar industry in regional economic development." According to an official from Chaoyang District Intellectual Property Office, so far there are more than 2700 registered design firms, covering a wide range of fields such as clothing, fashion, animation and booth design. From January to November, 2012, the above-scale design service enterprises in this region achieved total revenue of 4.26 billion Yuan, an increase of 27.9%. With the further implementation of national intellectual property strategy, the creation of IPR has significantly improved in this region. From 2011 to 2012, the patents granted annually in this region increased from 6,605 to 9,993. In the past 5 years  since the implementation of IP strategy, the region's design patent applications increased 21.3% annually on average. In 2012, holding 1,509 design patents, Chaoyang District ranked the top in Beijing.

"Design service industry like 798 Art Zone means more and more in promoting economic and social progress. Intellectual property must play a significant role here, meeting higher demands for intellectual property protection." Pan Xinsheng, the deputy director of Beijing Municipal Intellectual Property Office stressed, that in the future Beijing will actively complete intellectual property speedy protection mechanism, effectively and efficiently helping enterprises improve "Trinity" capability, which is assuring, applying and protecting intellectual property, and secure regional and industrial continuous growth.

 (China IP News)