CAI MENG/CHINA DAILY

Editor's note: China has made remarkable progress in protecting intellectual property rights, which helps its economic transformation to innovation-driven growth. This will benefit the country and the rest of the world, which should be appreciated by other countries, including the United States. Three experts share their views with China Daily's Wu Zheyu. Excerpts follow:

Better protection should be acknowledged

 

Meng Rui, partner of Tiantai Law Firm

China is promoting an innovation-led economic policy. With more than 2 million applications for patents in 2015, China remains the biggest patent applicant in the world. The quality of these applications, however, does not match their number－for example, most of the applications are related to electronic communications. Another problem with these applications is the relatively low rate of the transformation of the patents into productivity, with individual applicants comprising a large percentage of the total. Compared with US' corporations, Chinese innovations, even if they receive patent license, have limited applicability and profitability in the real industry.

Fortunately, the authorities have come up with various measures to advance the mechanism of patent licensing and operation, as well as to encourage more patent applications from diversified areas. As patent applications by China's corporate sector have increased in recent years, the authorities' efforts will help improve the applicability of patents in industries and thus raise the quality of production in China.

The United States initiated a Section 301 investigation into so-called Chinese intellectual property theft in August in response to some US corporations' complaints, which should not be mistaken as the mainstream voice of US enterprises. China has come a long way in improving its IPR system, and that should be acknowledged.

And given the corporations' complaints and resultant probe, the two sides should try to know the facts and then seek a solution through cooperation. In fact, this is a good occasion for both sides to learn from each other, especially because now China provides greater IPR protection.

Firms will use law to protect their IPR

Yao Qi, associate professor and assistant dean of Law School, Beijing Foreign Studies University

China today has stricter laws and regulations to protect IPR, and better enforces them. Not only are Chinese industries and enterprises attaching higher value to IPR protection, but also China has become a large IP exporter to other countries.

 

The Law for Countering Unfair Competition was revised recently, in particular, to target unfair competition behaviors such as improperly using intellectual properties of other individuals or companies, or violating their commercial interests. China leads the world in terms of the number of IPR cases－Chinese courts dealt with 109,386 civil IPR cases in 2015, compared with only about 14,500 cases in the US. And China has been fulfilling its commitments under the international IPR conventions and agreements it has inked.

Enterprises are the main players in the market and will use every legal course to protect their IPR. Therefore, it is not becoming of one government to pressure another to guarantee foolproof IPR protection.

Need to make market mechanism healthier

Cheng Shuaihua, director of International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development

 

Of course, we should respect patents and protect IPR. But one of the main purposes of having patent laws is to encourage innovation and gradually improve existing technologies to widen their applicability. If over-protection or even lawful acquisition of technology appears ugly, then it would hamper the progress of innovation.

China and the US both should move in the same direction to establish a healthy market mechanism that fosters cooperation in technology transfer, and sets a legal standard that can be applied on and by both sides. More important, the US needs to develop a greater sense of mutual trust, abandon its bias and focus more on practical solutions, including working with China to formulate a technical framework to make cooperation workable and profitable.

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