Asia becomes global powerhouse of IPR and innovation, says Boao Forum

Asia has become a global powerhouse of innovation and intellectual property rights, which has given a strong boost to the world economy, said Shen Changyu, head of the China National Intellectual Property Administration on Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan province, on Wednesday.

At the "Intellectual Property in Asia: Trends and Opportunities" sub-forum, Shen highlighted that IPR, as a country's strategic resource of national development and core element in enhancing international competitiveness, plays an important role in today's world.

With an uncertain global economic recovery, innovation and IPR protection are key for sci-tech progress, industrial upgrading and sustainable development, said Li Baodong, secretary-general of the Boao Forum for Asia.

Asian economies have been making significant progress in the IPR sector in recent years, Li added, with the area emerging as a global innovation leader, providing multiple opportunities for regional and global economic development.

According to a report by the World Intellectual Property Organization released last year, offices in Asia received around 2.2 million patent applications in 2020, representing 66.6 percent of the world total, while the combined figure for Europe and North America was just under the 1 million mark – less than half the total for Asia.

This was primarily driven by a strong growth in filings in China, which in 2020 accounted for 68.6 percent of all applications filed in the region.

Protecting intellectual property rights is a protection of innovation, Shen said.

WIPO's report showed five Asian economies featured among the top 15 of the global innovation index in 2021, and China ranked 12th, the only middle-income economy in the top 30.

The Tokyo-Yokohama region boasted the top science and technology cluster worldwide, followed by Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Beijing in the second and third spots, respectively.

"At present, China's copyright industry is ushering in unprecedented historical opportunities," said Zhang Jianchun, vice head of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

Last September, China issued guidelines on IPR development for the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period to further optimize its IPR system in 26 key areas, including legal construction, copyright registration, international and domestic trade and social services.

In 2020, the added value of copyrights in China reached 7.51 trillion yuan ($1.17 trillion), accounting for 7.39 percent of GDP. In 2021, the total number of copyrights registered reached 6.26 million, an increase of 24.3 percent year-on-year.

Copyrights for online video, music and games have already grown into important innovative resources for the internet industry, and the market size of these exceeded one trillion yuan for the first time in 2020, up 23.6 percent from a year earlier.

However, there are still various challenges in the IPR sector, Zhang said. The standardization of copyright protection law still needs to be improved, and high-quality copyright achievements are not enough.

The country is devoted to fully unleashing the capability and creativity of copyright in the whole society to drive high-quality development, Zhang said, adding Asian countries should enhance multilateral communication and cooperation while actively building up the international copyright trading and information platform.