On May 14th, in the course of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, SIPO Commissioner Shen Changyu and WIPO Director General Francis Gurry jointly signed the People's Republic of China and WIPO Agreement to Strengthen Belt and Road IPR Cooperation in Beijing.

This is the first known document on Belt and Road IPR Cooperation signed between the Chinese government and an international organization. This marks the launch of a comprehensive and in depth cooperation centered on Belt and Road Initiative between the two sides, meant to promote the development of IPR in countries and regions along the Belt and Road.

 

The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China decided to launch the law enforcement inspection of Copyright Law. The Law Enforcement Inspection Team was divided into 5 groups heading for Beijing, Shanghai, Fujian, Guangdong and Qinghai for inspection, and at the same time entrusted 10 regional standing committees (district level and municipal level) including Tianjin, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Shandong to inspect over the enforcement of Copyright Law in their administrative regions. In late August, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China will listen and review the enforcement report of the Copyright Law.

 

To actively fulfill Deep Implementation of National IP Strategic Plan (2014-2020), further improve the managing and practicing ability of patent in the western regions of China, and constantly strengthen the patent information support, SIPO will develop the patent information utilization and support in seven regions including Guizhou, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Tibet, Xinjiang etc. To orderly promote the work, SIPO set and published the 2017 Implementation Plan of Patent Information Support.

 

On June 2, SIPO established and released the 13th Five-Year Plan for IP Talents, which indicated that a team of high-level IP talents should be set up, focusing on IP leading talents, millions of talents program and a hundred young talents. With endeavor, the team should have IP leading talents who possess solid theoretical knowledge foundation, have relative high practical skills, relative rich experience and competitiveness in the international stage, and play full role of the leading and demonstration function as leading talents, building a talent team of leading talents.

 

General Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China released the 2017 National Working Points of Striking IP Infringement and Counterfeit Manufacture and Sale, which defines 31 key working points, including Internet Infringement and counterfeit administration, supervision enforcement of sending and delivering procedure, software legalization promotion, protection enforcement of new varieties of plants and other areas; which covers 8 parts, including constantly promoting administration in main areas, enforcing routine supervision in product quality and strengthening the efforts to strike IP infringement etc.

 

SIPO announced that the publication period of patent public announcement will be adjusted to twice a week from once a week from June 6, 2017, in order to provide high-quality and high efficiency service for the applicants and patentees. Every Tuesday and Friday is the publication date. The above adjustment involves with the application announcement of invention patent, license announcement and routine announcement of three kinds of patents — invention patent, utility patent and design patent.

 

According to the requirements of Opinions of the SAIC on Vigorously Promoting Facilitation Reform of Trademark Registration, the new edition trademark registration information inquiry system started a pilot run on May 5, 2017, in order to improve the service level of China's trademark website and promote the speed upgrade of the inquiry system. The users can visit the website for trademark information inquiry and from May 5 on, the old edition website has been unavailable.

(Source://wsjs.saic.gov.cn/txnT01.do?locale=en_US&locale=en_US&y7bRbP=Kam2kVRDp9RDp9RDFHcTgbCR9w5MbaTiAk2D2_riWV3)

 

State Administration for Industry and Commerce of China (SAIC) published Opinions on Deeply Implementing Trademark & Brand Strategy and Promoting Chinese Brands Building (Opinions), developing the trademark strategy into the trademark and brand strategy. SAIC will thoroughly implement Trademark and Brand Strategy, making "Chinese manufactured" to be "Chinese brand", and promoting China to be a brand powerful country.

 

SIPO and Ministry of Finance of the People's Republic of China joint l y developed the selection of main cities to build IP operation service system. Through voluntary application of the cities, examination and recommendation from the financial department and IP department of the provinces and the review of experts, 8 cities including Suzhou, Ningbo, Chengdu, Changsha, Xi'an, Zhengzhou, Xiamen and Qingdao were selected as the main cities to build IP operation service system.

 

The Trademark Office of the SAIC released Trademark Application and Registration Statistical Table of China's Provinces, Autonomous Regions and Municipalities Directly Under the Central Government in the First Quarter of 2017 and a photographical table. Among these regions, Guangdong province tops three indexes, with 158,019 trademark applications, 115,881 trademark registrations and 2,149,415 valid registrations.