IPR Photo:VCG

China is willing to further deepen friendly cooperation with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and work together to make the global intellectual property governance system fairer and more equitable and better improve the well-being of humankind, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a congratulatory letter on Wednesday. 

Xi sent to the letter to a commemorative event in Beijing marking the 50th anniversary of cooperation between China and the WIPO, the Xinhua News Agency reported. As part of the celebrations, China has been holding a series of events this week to highlight achievements both in its own intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and global cooperation. 

Xi noted that, over the past 50 years, China has been firmly committed to upholding the multilateral system of international IPR, and the country's cooperation with the WIPO has been expanded and deepened with fruitful results, according to Xinhua. 

China has always attached great importance to IPR protection, and exerted efforts to make the country stronger in intellectual property. China has strengthened the legal protection of IPR, improved the IPR management system, strengthened IPR full-chain protection, and continued to improve the innovation and business environment, Xi said in the letter.

Speaking at the event on Wednesday, Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang said that President Xi's congratulatory letter fully reflects the great importance attached to IPR work, according to Xinhua. 

Ding said that China will comprehensively strengthen the protection of IPR and stands ready to establish a closer cooperative relationship with the WIPO and jointly promote international intellectual property cooperation, while calling for joint efforts to improve the global governance of IPR and firmly maintain the multilateral system of IPR with the WIPO as its core. 

WIPO Director General Daren Tang attended the event on Wednesday and has been meeting senior Chinese officials. During a meeting with Zhang Jun, president of the Supreme People's Court, on Tuesday, Tang said that over the past 50 years, the progress China has made in the field of IPR protection is historic, according to news website China.com.cn. 

Shan Xiaoguang, professor at the International College of Intellectual Property at Tongji University in Shanghai, said that IPR protection has made a "huge" contribution to China's economic development, especially its effort to become an innovative country, and through cooperation with the WIPO, China has also actively participated in global IPR governance. 

"China has certain advanced experience and research results in the field of digital technology, and we can contribute to global development through international cooperation," Shan told the Global Times on Wednesday.

WIPO and Chinese official data have indicated that China has not only made great strides in IPR protection but has also become a main contributor to global innovation and filings under the WIPO's Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

In 2022, China remained the top origin of PCT applications filed with 70,015, with a modest growth of 0.6 percent year-on-year, according to data from the WIPO released in February. In comparison, the US, which came in second, filed 59,056 applications, a drop of 0.6 percent year-on-year. 

According to the China National Intellectual Property Administration, China granted 798,000 invention patents in 2022, with 9.4 high-value invention patents for every 10,000 people. Highlighting the country's solid effort to crack down on IPR infringements, the country handled 44,000 cases of illegal acts in the fields of patents and trademarks, and there were 58,000 administrative adjudication cases concerning patent infringement disputes.

"Institutional protection of IPR is a crucial part of effort to create a favorable business environment, and the public data showed that China has made great strides in both IPR authorization and protection," Zhao Zhanling, a lawyer from Beijing JAVY Law Firm, told the Global Times on Wednesday, noting that China's international IPR exchanges also made huge progress. 

China's IP royalty trade in 2022 reached 387.25 billion yuan ($55.92 billion), up 2.4 percent year-on-year, with exports increasing 17 percent year-on-year, data from the CNIPA showed. In the past decade, 115 countries and regions under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) registered 253,000 patents in China, with an average annual growth rate of 5.6 percent, and Chinese companies registered 12,000 patents in BRI markets, up 16.4 percent year-on-year. 

Also highlighted is China's strengthened IPR protection for foreign businesses. Data from the State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR) showed that the number of valid foreign innovation patents registered in China hit 861,000 by the end of 2022, up 4.5 percent year-on-year, involving 58,000 foreign enterprises. The number of valid foreign trademark registered in China hit 2.03 million, up 5.9 percent year-on-year.

Gan Lin, a deputy head of the SAMR, said on Wednesday that China places high emphasis on IPR protection among foreign-invested enterprises as well as their legal rights and interest