The Chinese national intellectual property strategy

and its impressive key points after 10 years of the implementation

Email: vinh@bross.vn

Chinese impressive indicators in terms of IP filing activities

In its own report when judging from the various output indicators used to measure the ecomomy’s capacity to innovate, OECD assumed that Chinese achievements have been quite remarkable because it is also excelling in international patent applications, for instance, in 2016, 1.3 million of the roughly 3 million patents filed worldwide were filed in China. In 2017, the country attained second position after the United States as a source of patent applications filed via the WIPO[1].

According to the WIPO’s intellectual property indicators 2019, China has been the main driver of global growth in IP filings in recent years and it was once again the main source of growth in worldwide IP filings in 2018 with an increase of 11.6% for patents, 28.3% for trademarks and 12.7% for industrial designs. With respect to total global patents, trademarks and designs applications, only China accounts for 46.4%, 51.4% and 54% filing activity respectively[2].

According to the Annual Development Report on China’s Trademark Strategy 2014, China is both the world's most populous country and the country with the largest number of annual trademark applications in the world. During the past 13 consecutive years, China is still considered the dominant position, for example, in 2014 alone, 2,285,000 trademark applications were filed with the Chinese Trademark Office, CTMO (now changed as CNIPA), with an increase of the annual average is 21.74%, of which the applications filed by Chinese citizens or legal entities accounts for the majority of 93.64% while the proportion of Madrid-based and foreign applications is only 2.28% and 6,36% respectively[3].

According to the China IP Magazine, in 2017 the number of trademark applications filed with CNIPA surpassed 5 million applications, reaching a record explosive figure of 5,748,000 applications, an increase of 55.7% compared to 2016. At the end of 2017, the total number of trademark registrations totaled 27,842,000, the number of protected trademarks was 17,301,000, of which the number of valid trademark registrations was 14,920,000. As a result, China ranked No. 1 in the world for a record number of trademark applications for 17 consecutive years.

Chinese impressive IP and innovation development attained as a result of 3 pillars of Chinese intellectual property policies in its 10-year national intellectual property strategy

Since China enacted the Outline of National IP Strategy in 2008, aiming to make China a country with a high level of protection, exploiting and creating intellectual property rights, China has shown many great advances and developments[4]. Those successes have been rooted from the excellent implementation of 3 pillars of intellectual property rights in a bid to establishing a balance of interests between IP rights holders, the public and the State, including: (a) the updated legal substantive system, (b) the system of IP-specialized courts, and (c) the practice of resolving intellectual property rights disputes are quite good.

Firstly, among these advances, the first is the improvement of the intellectual property right-related substantive legal system, namely the 4th amendment to the Trademark Law, first promulgated in the year of 1982, 2nd revision in 1993, 3rd revision in 2001. Next is the 4^th revision of the trademark law of 2013 that took effect on May 1, 2014. In addition to Decrees guiding the implementation of the trademark law, the highest-level judicial body in China as its Supreme People's Court has also issued multiple trial guides in order to fairly and accurately hear administrative cases concerning grant of protection, enforce in accordance with the law, clarify and unify trial standards, thereby helping to ensure the ability to solve the balance issues of the parties’ rights and lawful interests

Secondly, in 2014 China began to establish and operate specialized intellectual property courts (IP courts) in three important centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. In early 2017, China continued to set up specialized intellectual property tribunals, also known as specialized IP tribunals in 4 more cities, comprising Nanjing, Suzhou, Chengdu, and Wuhan. According to the data published at the 4th National Conference on Intellectual Property Trial, the whole system of  Chinese courts has heard 813,000 civil, administrative and criminal cases related to property intellectual property rights during 4 years between 2013 and 2017 and in fact the courts have completed 781,000 cases.

It is worth noting that another agency, although not a court, has a huge role and duty in dealing with complaints against rejection of protection, oppositions or cancellations of trademark, which is the the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board ("TRAB"), an agency under the Ministry of Industry and Trade of China, completely independent from the CTMO (responsible for examining and granting protection of trademark registration applications in the territory of China). According to the information released by the TRAB in 2017, the total number of trademark complaint cases decided by the TRAB reached a record number of 168,900 cases including 9,310 the TRAB-related cases with subpoena[5]. Of course, both TRAB and CTMO were no longer available at present. Currently, only one Chinese agency in charge of intellectual property nationwide is the CNIPA[6].

Thirdly, the hearing practices has shown that China is very advanced in judging intellectual property lawsuits in view of the speed of trial and the quality of trial which are reportedly replied on a bit efficient operation by the specialized IP court systems and the updated and clear IP-related laws system together with judges with IP knowledge and experience. 

 
Bross & Partners has had experience in advising and successfully registered certification marks and collective marks in Vietnam. Should you have any query, please contact us at vinh@bross.vn or 84-903 287 057.

Bross & Partners, a renowned and qualified Patent, Design, Trademark and Copyright agent of Vietnam, constantly ranked and recommended by the Managing Intellectual Property (MIP), World Trademark Review (WTR), Legal 500 Asia Pacific, AsiaLaw Profiles, Asia IP and Asian Legal Business, is providing clients all over the world with the reliable, affordable contentious and non-contentious IP services including enforcement, anti-counterfeiting,  litigation regarding trademark, trade name, industrial design, patent, copyright and domain name.