Based on increased cooperation between the world's largest five intellectual property offices in China, the United States, the European Union, South Korea and Japan, a growing number of fruitful programs have begun in China to help improve the efficiency of using resources from these offices.

One of those is an online patent information system of which the State Intellectual Property Office started trial operations at the end of last year to offer free updates and downloads of patent data from China and abroad.

The system enables users to access patent documents from the top five IP offices, which account for some 80 percent of the world's total.

After agreements on exchanging patent data were signed by the five offices in June 2014, China made the first move by opening the regions' databases for free distribution over the new SIPO system.

Qian Hongying, head of SIPO's automation department, said most of the data on the system is updated weekly.

Users need to sign an agreement for the initial use of the patent data and will receive a reply within three to five working days.

Making patent information available to the public is expected to advance the national IP strategy that started in 2008, helping China evolve from a large producer of patents to a strong IP powerhouse, said SIPO Deputy Commissioner Gan Shaoning at a press conference.

China currently faces challenges as its economy shifts gears to restructure industries and absorb the impact of previous incentives, Gan said.

The key to dealing with them is innovation-driven development, he added.

He called on innovators to make full use of the patent data, learn the latest developments in global R&D and their relevant industries, and sharpen their edge in creation and running high-tech startups.

Statistics from the World Intellectual Property Organization show that 90 to 95 percent of inventions are patented technologies.

About 70 percent of them first came to public light in patent filings.

Yan Xin, director of the Beijing division of the IP department at Huawei, told an IP-themed forum in April that patent documents, as a major vehicle for research findings, are valuable to innovators.

"Based on those previous innovations by others, we can advance further," Yan said.

SIPO Deputy Commissioner Gan said that providing easy access to high-quality patent data helps reduce time and costs in exploring information, which would in turn encourage new breakthroughs.

China's per capita GDP reached $6,767 in 2013, an indication that it has joined the ranks of middle-income countries, he said.

To become a high-income country, a change is needed in the industrial structure to focus on the service industry, he said.

IP-related services, which are closely related to high-tech industries and listed as one of the four pillar service sectors designated by the central government, will play a crucial part in the change, he said.

"The sector is a knowledge intensive industry that highly relies on information resources," he said. "Open patent data is a primary condition to foster market-driven IP service providers and ensure they grow larger, stronger and more professional."

At the same time, the freely available data also helps increase transparency and the authority of the patent examination process, and advances the country's development based on the rule of law, he said.

The number of invention patents that SIPO has granted and are still in effect surpassed 1.19 million by the end of 2014, 59.2 percent of them from within China.

SIPO data shows that the country began to become the largest patent filer in the world in 2011 and continued to rank third globally in international patents filed through the Patent Cooperation Treaty in 2014, with some 26,000 PCT filings handled at the office during the year.

Despite the marked rise, China ranks only 32nd on the global innovation index, according to a 2013 WIPO report.

Only 35 percent of patent information in China is actually used, much lower than the 92 percent in Japan, China Invention and Patent magazine reported.

As a result, SIPO has launched a series of online systems to facilitate effective use of patent information, with more than 70 data platforms running nationwide.

 (Source: China Daily)