China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO) celebrated their 30 years of bilateral cooperation, a strategic partnership that made great achievements in innovating businesses in both regions and had a profound impact on worldwide patent system building.
At a symposium held on Friday in Lyon (France) in which more than 140 high-level Chinese and European experts from government, industry, academia and patent profession have attended, SIPO and EPO reviewed the achievements of their three decades of collaboration in areas such as staff training and exchanges, the improvement of related laws and regulations, the sharing of data and expertise, as well as the harmonization of tools and procedures.
China and Europe established cooperation in intellectual property (IP) in 1985 by signing the first bilateral agreement. In 2007, SIPO and EPO stepped into strategic partnership, which upgraded their cooperation from a purely technical to a strategic level.
Shen Changyu, Commissioner of SIPO, in his opening address at the symposium expressed his appreciation of the EPO's contribution in the development of China's IP system. EPO President Benoit Battistelli said that China has become a global leading player in the field and its national patent system is among the most modern and efficient ones in the world .
"In terms of patent applications for invention received, China is now the largest country in the world, with nearly one billion applications received by SIPO in 2014," noted Battistelli, adding that the volume of Chinese patent filing received by EPO has also made a remarkable progress, making China the fourth largest applicant country to EPO in 2014, ranked above France.
With the constant improvement of China's IP system in legislation, regulation and law enforcement, and the fact that Chinese and European patent systems have more and more characteristics in common, the number of patent filing presented by inventors or companies from one side to the other has been on rapid rise.
From 2005 to 2014, the volume of Chinese patent filings received by EPO has increased tenfold. In 2014, in the EPO's 274,174 patent filings, those from China reached 26,462, accounting for about 9 percent of total.
Meanwhile, among 928,000 patent filings received by SIPO in 2014, 127,000 are from foreign applicants, where applications from the 38 member states of EPO accounted for 28 percent.
"The top three areas where China presented the most patent application to the EPO were digital communication, computer technology and telecommunications," said Battistelli, saying that this result fully reflect the strength of Chinese economy which has reached a global leading level in the field of ICT and innovation.
He said he is convinced that, considering the granting of a patent may cost three to fours years on average, there will be a significant increase of the number of patents granted by the EPO to China in the next few years.
The cooperation in patent documentation classification and translation, so as to the co-development of advanced searching tools played a constructive role in simplifying and harmonizing the patent application procedures for applicants from both Europe and China, which provided more opportunities for inventors and companies to access each other's market.
China has adopted the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system, making it possible for patent applications to be classified in the same manner in the two regions. Besides, EPO and SIPO launched the Global Dossier service in 2014, a platform providing access to European and Chinese dossier content for a family of patent applications which makes it easier for applicants filing at both offices to track their applications.
"EPO and SIPO will continue to work together to let our patent examiners receive the same training and work with the same tools, so that they can finally work together in a complementary way," Battistelli told Xinhua, adding that they also expected to promote the Global Dossier service at international lever, an ambitious project to be achieved in the future.
He stressed that in the multilateral discussions under the aegis of the World Intellectual property organization (WIPO), Europe and China will also work closely to promote common IP rules in the Substantive Patent Law Treaty.
Regarding the future of the bilateral IP cooperation, Commissioner of SIPO Shen Changyu said that SIPO is ready to work together with EPO to further deepen their strategic partnership, so as to contribute more to the economic, scientific and cultural development not only in China and Europe, but also around the world.
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