CHINA REPORT: Creative Impetus

China has made noticeable progress in protecting intellectual property over the past 40 years.

- Li Xiaoyu

June 3 marks the 40th anniversary of China’s accession to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Over the past four decades, remarkable achievements have been made in China in promoting intellectual property protection.

Establishing a patent system

After China launched the policy of reform and opening up in the late 1970s, its trade with the rest of the world rapidly picked up. At the time, the country operated a reward scheme for inventions and there was not a patent system. Because of the absence of a patent system, counterfeiting behaviors could not be effectively punished, and on the other hand rights and interests of inventors could not be effectively protected, said Xia Shuhua, a researcher at the Institute of Law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

As an example, Xia cited the case of Yuan Longping, known as “the father of hybrid rice.” The U.S. tested his planting techniques in the late 1970s and the results were compelling. But as the U.S. was getting ready to commercialize the techniques, they realized that Yuan did not actually own any of the patents. Indeed, China had 46 technologies related to hybrid rice planting and had made 42 public, without benefiting from any of them. Ironically, a few years later, Yuan encountered financial difficulties when he tried to further his development of hybrid rice technology.

This is why the establishment of a patent system found its way onto the agenda of Chinese policy makers at the time. A patent bill development group was created, of which Xia became a member.