On September 24 according to the local time, the 58th Serial Meetings of WIPO Member State Conference of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) opened in Geneva of Switzerland. Shen Changyu, commissioner of China National Intellectual Property Administration, led the government delegation of the People's Republic of China to attend the conference. At the conference, Shen Changyu called on all sides to further strengthen cooperation to promote the development of global intellectual property system in joint efforts. Yu Jianhua, the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the permanent mission of china to the UN office at Geneva, and Liang Jiali, Intellectual Property Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, attended the conference.

Shen Changyu said in his speech that the Chinese Government attaches great importance to the protection of intellectual property right, and it will establish a more complete set of relevant laws and regulations to strengthen the protection of intellectual property right, show no discrimination in protecting the intellectual property of enterprises with foreign investment and make great efforts to build a good environment for doing business and making innovation. At the beginning of this year, the Chinese government reorganized China National Intellectual Property Administration and has realized the centralized management of the intellectual property concerning the patent, trademark, appearance design, geographical sign and layout-design of integrated circuits; and it also further optimized the control over copyright, thus greatly improving the efficiency in the management of the intellectual property. 

Shen Changyu said that the cause of the intellectual property in China continued to maintain a good momentum in its development last year. The statistics showed that in the first half of this year, China National Intellectual Property Administration accepted a total number of 751,000 applications for a patent for invention, that of 3.586 million applications for registration of trademarks and that of 23,000 PCT international applications for a patent, up 6.3% on a year-on-year basis. Last year, the total number of copyright registrations in China was up to 2.73 million.

Shen expressed his appreciation for the remarkable achievements made by WIPO last year. He pointed out that Chinese government and WIPO continued to deepen their cooperation over the past year. China National Intellectual Property Administration spared no efforts to drive the development of PCT, Madrid Agreement and Hague Agreement in China and support the Chinese office of WIPO to operate in a high-efficient way.

Shen put forward three suggestions on the relevant affairs under the WIPO framework. First, China unswervingly supports the multilateralism and firmly safeguards the role of a main platform played by WIPO in the formulation of rules for the global intellectual property. We are expecting the formulation of rules for the Intergovernmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) will make substantive progress; we are expecting WIPO will discuss and formulate protection rules for the newly-emerged technological fields; and make efforts to hold the diplomatic conference of Treaty of Appearance Design Law as soon as possible, reach consensus on Treaty on Protecting Broadcasting Organizations as soon as possible, make Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances come into force as soon as possible; and we are expecting the application of AI in the examination of patent and trademark will obtain a landmark achievement and The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations will be actively implemented. Second, he called upon all sides to further strengthen cooperation to promote the development of global intellectual property system in joint efforts, construct an open, inclusive, balanced and effective international order for the intellectual property, and object to the behaviors for practicing trade protectionism in the name of protecting the intellectual property right. Third, renewed efforts should be made to establish a sound global intellectual property service system of WIPO and support the expansion of the working language of the service system for better serving the development of innovation in all countries.

Shen also asked Liang Jiali to make a supplementary speech on the work of the intellectual property in Hong Kong.

The Chinese government delegation consisted of China National Intellectual Property Administration, National Copyright Administration, the Permanent Mission of China to the UN Office at Geneva and Intellectual Property Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and ALL-CHINA PATENT AGENTS ASSOCIATION attended the conference without voting rights as observers. (Translated from CNIPA Website Chinese Version)