A national center has been established to offer guidance to Chinese businesses about resolving overseas intellectual property disputes, it was announced yesterday at a press conference in Beijing.
The launch of the center “was part of efforts to enhance the mechanism in dealing with overseas IP disputes,” said Zhao Gang, deputy head of the National Intellectual Property Administration (NIPA).
The center has two main tasks:
- to guide and serve Chinese enterprises in safeguarding their IP rights overseas, and
- to help them better understand and respect the IP systems and rules of overseas jurisdictions.
In recent years, an announcement stated, Chinese enterprises are encountering a significantly rising number of IP disputes overseas.
A senior NIPA official, Zhang Zhicheng, said “the rise was caused by their inadequate understanding of overseas systems and legal procedures, difficulties in obtaining information and language barriers, as well as the lack of access to reliable professional assistance.”
News of the center was run in XinhuaNet, a part of the Xinhua New Agency, the official state-run press agency of the People’s Republic of China. Xinhua is the biggest and most influential media organization in China, and the largest news agency in the world
“Opening-Up”
The officials said that “China has been striving to enhance its IP protection system to improve the business environment and advance opening-up.”
In the first half of this year, foreign patent applications in China grew 8.6 percent and trademarks 15.4 percent, which “demonstrated foreign enterprises’ confidence and trust in China’s IP system,” said Zhao.
Image source: chinaipmagazine.com
ipcloseup.com 