China is home to 17 world-leading technology clusters, and Bay Area cities are leading the pack, driving a growing demand for IP services covering everything from patents to arbitrating disputes. The challenges — and the opportunities — are huge. Zhou Mo reports from Shenzhen.
As the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area moves toward its goal of developing into a global innovation and technology hub, intellectual property protection and collaboration has become an issue that is drawing mounting attention.
Experts and industry leaders say the Bay Area, which is expected to attract an increasingly large number of innovative businesses from around the world given its market size and potential, will see greater demand for IP services, bringing ample opportunities to professionals from the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, and the Bay Area as a whole should spare no effort in promoting IP protection and collaboration to create a better environment to attract those businesses.
IP services providers from Hong Kong will embrace a much larger market to explore thanks to the integration between Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland
Kevin Hau, managing director of Hong Kong-based IP services provider Accolade IP Ltd
IP is considered the foundation of innovation. Protection and exploitation of IP are vital for ensuring the sustainability of technological innovation.
In the development blueprint laid out for the Bay Area in February 2019, the central government highlighted the need for strengthened cooperation on IP protection and cultivation of professionals among Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, stating that the region should establish an IP information exchange mechanism and an IP information sharing platform.
The document also said Hong Kong should give full play to its advantages in such fields as IP protection and professional services, and develop itself into a regional IP trading center.
The significance of IP protection lies in its impact on the business environment in the Bay Area; the better IP is protected, the greater enthusiasm businesses will have to set up their research and development headquarters there, said Gu Qizhi, president of the Guangdong Knowledge Economy Development Promotion Association.
He stressed that IP protection should not be dealt with on the regional level, but should be considered on the national level.
“That is because competitors of Bay Area enterprises are not limited to the southern region, but are scattered across the country, for example, in the Yangtze River Delta region,” Gu said. “In this sense, we need to improve the environment of IP protection from the national level.”
IP protection has been assigned increasing importance in China in recent years as the country turns gradually from an IP importer to an IP creator.
President Xi Jinping said last month that innovation is the major driving force for development and that it could be promoted by enhancing the protection of IP.
He called for the improvement of IP protection in new industrial areas including big data, artificial intelligence and genetic technology, and the formulation of rules to protect traditional culture and knowledge.
Related laws and regulations on IP protection should be improved and grave cases of IP infringement must be punished in accordance with the law, Xi stressed.
China was ranked 14th among 131 of the top-performing economies in the Global Innovation Index 2020, released by the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization in September.
The country is home to 17 world-leading technology clusters, with Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou ranking second globally by publishing and patent performance, following Tokyo-Yokohama, according to the report.
A leader in IP development, the Bay Area continued to see growth in the sector even with the unprecedented blow from the coronavirus pandemic this year.
According to official statistics, eight of the 11 Bay Area cities — nine Guangdong province cities plus the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions — recorded an increase in the number of patent applications in the first half of 2020 compared with the same period in 2019, with Guangzhou growing 18.44 percent, followed by Zhuhai, 16.38 percent, Macao, 16.36 percent, and Shenzhen, 12.47 percent.
The number of patents granted in the 11-city cluster has also risen at a fast pace, with nine achieving double-digit year-on-year growth in the first six months. Guangzhou topped the list with 40.7 percent growth, while that of Zhaoqing, Shenzhen and Jiangmen increased by 30.14, 29.61 and 29.5 percent respectively.
Collaboration in the Bay Area
“Development of the IP industry in the Bay Area is faster than that of other regions in the country,” said Wang Haibo, co-founder and chairman of Shenzhen Hartend Technology Co, a Shenzhen-based IP services provider. “That is because the bulk of the enterprises in the southern region are export-oriented and have suffered more battles with overseas competitors. That has made them develop a stronger awareness of the importance of IP.”
Even so, Wang said, “Compared to other bay areas in the world such as San Francisco’s, we still lag some way behind.”
Collaboration on IP among Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao has been going on for years. The three sides have established multilateral cooperation mechanisms, with the fields of cooperation covering exchanges on IP systems, joint customs law enforcement operations on IP infringement, publicity and promotion of IP knowledge and other related areas.
Explorations have also been made in recent years on mediation and arbitration of cross-boundary IP-related cases and other areas.
In a move that marked a milestone in IP cooperation in the Bay Area, the Guangzhou Development District launched a series of measures late last year on promoting mutual recognition and inter-communication of IP rights among Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. The measures cover comprehensive areas including IP creation, protection, exploitation, servicing and management.
For example, service institutions set up by Hong Kong or Macao residents that have carried out IP services work in the district for at least a year would be granted 200,000 yuan (US$30,600) as an incentive. Residents from the two special administrative regions who are doing IP services work in the district and have obtained national IP qualifications would be given 20,000 yuan each.
Enterprises with IP obtained in Hong Kong and Macao would be treated the same as their counterparts with mainland IP when applying for incentives, subsidies or recognition of qualifications in the district.
“Despite the progress, there is still tremendous room for Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao to cooperate on IP,” Gu said, adding that enhanced efforts should be made in such areas as IP trading, licensing, authorization, circulation and cross-regional services.
‘HK can play a bigger role’
Kevin Hau, managing director of Hong Kong-based IP services provider Accolade IP Ltd, said Hong Kong could play a bigger role in the field given its unique strengths, noting that the city boasts a sound legal system, an outstanding dispute resolution mechanism, a stable financial system, and strong research and development capabilities.
He added that the Bay Area, with its massive market, is expected to attract more and more innovative enterprises from all over the world to set up offices there, creating a bigger demand for IP services and benefiting professionals from Hong Kong.
“IP services providers from Hong Kong will embrace a much larger market to explore thanks to the integration between Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland,” he said at a forum during the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Intellectual Property Trade Expo 2020, held online in mid-November.
Hau said his company is pouring more resources into the Bay Area to meet the ever-growing business demand on the mainland, for example, by setting up a subsidiary in Guangzhou.
But given that Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao have different social and legal systems, and their IP systems are also diverse, more coordination between local governments is needed to pave the way for cross-border cooperation.
“The three sides should increase interaction with each other from both judiciary and administrative sides to enhance their consensus,” Gu said. “More efforts should also be made on the establishment of a unified IP protection system, mutual recognition of evidence, publicity and promotion of IP knowledge, civil exchanges, cross-border dispute resolution, etc.”
Contact the writer at sally@chinadailyhk.com
