China establishes 31 IPR protection centers

China has been promoting the construction of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection mechanism and built 31 IPR protection centers nationwide, said Zhang Zhicheng, head of the protection department of the National Intellectual Property Administration (NIPA) on April 26.

Zhang made the remarks at a press conference of the State Council Information Office, saying that the 31 IPR protection centers, together with 20 fast rights-protection centers, have provided convenient, highly efficient and low-cost rights safeguarding channels.

Intellectual property protection has improved the business environment. In a survey on social satisfaction of intellectual property protection in China last year, the result hit a record high of 78.98 out of 100 points.

China has been improving intellectual property laws and regulations, said Zhang. On Nov 1, 2019, the country's revised trademark law took effect, which raised the punitive damages for malicious infringement to up to five times the amount of actual losses, which is high by global standards.

The NIPA also revised standards for judging and testing trademark patent infringement and issued guidelines for administrative adjudication of patent infringement disputes, said Zhang, adding that China handled 39,000 administrative adjudication cases of patent infringement disputes last year.

Also in last year, the average processing time for trademark registrations was shortened to 4.5 months, and the processing time for high-value patents examination was reduced to 17.3 months.

The NIPA has reported 38,000 abnormal patent applications and rejected 39,000 abnormal trademark applications last year.