A senior official from the State Intellectual Property Office has promised to further promote the knowledge of intellectual property rights among the general Chinese public.

Xu Zhijiang, deputy director of SIPO's patent affairs department, made the pledge last week in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, at the opening ceremony of a promotion campaign.

Organized by SIPO, the annual event that began last year aims to better serve the country's economic development by promoting IP knowledge to workers to enhance their abilities to utilize, share, disseminate and manage their companies' intellectual property.

"Meanwhile, the companies will be able to increase their innovative capacities and upgrade their industrial structure through promotion of IP knowledge and protection," Xu said.

"Patent information is the key and basis to shape scientific research and thus promote innovation," he said. "China is now focusing on improvement in patent quality instead of quantity."

The rapid rise in the number of patents and continuous improvements in quality provide strong support for the popularization and use of Chinese patent information, he added.

Guangdong is the first leg of the promotion event, which will also travel to Shaanxi, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces before the end of the year.

Guangdong, which borders the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, is home to a myriad of foreign-funded companies, joint ventures and privately owned firms that play an increasingly important role in the province's economic development.

As one of the country's economic powerhouses, the province had more than 110,000 valid invention patents by the end of 2014, leading the nation for the fifth consecutive year.

Wu Handong, director of the IP Research Center at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, said industrial innovation is the source of economic development and that "respecting and protecting IP rights would help further improve the innovation ability of the country".

He suggested government agencies and companies pay increasing attention to IP knowledge and protection to shape an innovative country in the coming years.

China maintained its position as the world leader in annual patent applications for the fourth consecutive year in 2014, with 928,000 invention patent applications filed, a 12.5 percent increase from 2013. More than 1 million applications are expected this year.

There were 233,000 patents granted in 2014, taking the total number of invention patents authorized by SIPO to about 1.2 million, according to a report from the office.

The report also showed that Chinese companies are paying more attention to international patents, with a rising awareness of their IP edge in global competition. The country received 26,000 international patent applications via the Patent Cooperation Treaty from domestic companies last year, a 14.2-percent increase year-on-year.

However, the volume of patent applications does not indicate that China has become a strong innovation-oriented economy, the report said.

zhengcaixiong@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 08/05/2015 page17)