With the regular expansion of IP offices, China National Intellectual Property Administration has recently approved the opening of Intellectual Property protection centers in Liaoning, Jilin, and Changchun which increases the total number of centers in the country to 46. In Northeast China, the total number of IP centers went up to 5 centers along with the existing Shenyang and Heilongjiang centers. There has been a change in the way industries work due to the incoming of science and technology worldwide. This way there have been various problems which the traditional old industries, such as iron, steel, chemical are facing. This was moreover realized by the Chinese government who initiated multiple activities for the innovations so that there can be a good transformation of these traditional industries in the line of high-tech industries. China, more or less, followed the regional policies and guidance to uplift those industries. With such transformation, the need for major IP protection increased in the Northeast. This is the primary reason for setting up the IP centers in the Northeast. As stated, five centers might be sufficient but owing to a large-scale change and development, perhaps China would require to set up more centers there.
Efficient IP services
It is expected that five centers will help in providing efficient services for IP protection. The industries are dealing with some of the high-end manufacturing and equipment concerning information technology and biomedical services. These industries are heavily dependent on IP protection for sustaining them in the market and earning profit. These centers will provide full advantages of providing IP services to the local industries that will help them in their local and national businesses as well.
Multiple problems were faced by the industries in the northeast with regards to the protection of IP. Like, the long period of patent examination, delay in administrative enforcement, and no solid dispute resolution mechanism. These delays in the procedural aspects greatly affected strong IP protection for industries. With the incoming of more centers, it is expected that it will speed up all the procedures aspects such as patent examination and rapid right confirmation, and rapid right protection, and provide rapid collaborative protection of IP with the linkage of examination and right confirmation, administrative law enforcement, right protection assistance, arbitration and mediation, and judicial convergence. Also, this will help in decreasing the average time of the examination period where it can be done in three to six months from the earlier 22 months. Similarly, for a utility patent, it can reduce from an average of six months to one month and five months to less than 10 working days for a design patent.
In cases, where it is required for coordinated and unified enforcement such as those of counterfeiting patent cases and infringement, it is expected that the period required for the same will also be shortened by one month from the original three months. These cases generally involve high costs and time. With the centers in function, it is expected to greatly relief the industries and even the enforcement authorities with its rapid integrated services. Making it more convenient for the lawyer, it will help them to effectively coordinate and better support the services. With the better coordination of the lawyer and the authorities, it will ultimately benefit the local industries.
Incoming of more High-end technologies
Making the cross-departmental collaboration more convenient, it is assumed that this will provide more comprehensive IP protection which will serve for high-quality economic development in the region. With the sole rule that development is with innovation and it's the IP that protects innovation, the strong collaboration will indeed work for the benefit of industries. This is true that the northeast area has been the area which houses old industries. With old industries and no such high-tech development, remote geographical location, and backward technology, this area lags from other areas in terms of innovation and development of high-tech new industries. With strong policy guidance and transformation and upgrading of industries, new high-tech industries are rapidly moving forward to settle in northeast China. With IP centers in the northeast, this area will soon emerge as one of the key areas for IP protection and development.
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