2018 Assessment Report on the Development of Intellectual Property in China: IP Application has Accelerated

The Intellectual Property Development and Research Center of China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) has recently completed the 2018 Assessment Report on the Development of Intellectual Property in China; and through quantitative analysis, it has established index systems for domestic assessment and international comparison respectively. The domestic system consists of 4 primary indexes, 11 secondary ones and 55 tertiary ones, whereas the international one has 3, 9 and 33 respectively. According to relevant data, the comprehensive development index of intellectual property in China reached 257.4 (the 2017 index being 100), an increase of 17.9% compared with that of last year. From an overall perspective, creation, application, protection and environment indexes in China reached 249.3, 234.8, 274.3 and 271.3 respectively, an increase of 15.2%, 28.5%, 17.8% and 12.5% compared with those of last year. Internationally speaking, China has made great headway in comprehensive IP development index among 40 major countries, rising from No. 13 to No. 8.

In 2018, China made greater progress in IP application compared with creation, protection and environment. The application scale has been expanded, as the number of regions scoring lower than 50 was further reduced; the benefits brought by IP application have been increasing, with top-ranking regions being best performers. For instance, indexes of South China’s Guangdong province and East China’s Jiangsu province exceeded 80, which shows a close relationship between IP application and economic development. These achievements can be attributed to multiple measures China has taken to establish mechanisms and platforms and promote industrial development, which helps to integrate the whole chain of IP creation, application, protection and management. This has facilitated the management of IP creation and protection to generate more market benefits, enhanced China’s comprehensive strength in IP application and delivered more benefits.

However, the Report also demonstrates that there is still a lot work to do to boost intellectual property in China. First, invention quality still needs to be enhanced. Most regions had a quality index lower than quantity and efficiency ones, and the contribution of quality index to creation index did not meet the 100% standard. Second, regional development has become more imbalanced, which is evidenced by a large gap between developed regions in eastern China and eight regions with a less-than-60 comprehensive index in the west. Third, external environment requires improvement, as China’s environment index has been lowering than its capacity and performance indexes for several years. This means more efforts needed to improve business environment.

July 28, 2019

Source: China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA)

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