Promoting Sci-Tech Innovation Is Focal Point

The 17th Session of the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC), on August 25, this year, adopted the Decision of NPC Standing Committee on Revision of the Patent Law of the People's Republic of China. The Patent Law, revised for the second time, will go into effect on July 1, 2001. The successful amendment of the Patent Law represents an important milestone in the development history of China's patent undertaking, it will exert major and far-reaching influence on China's scientific and technological progress and innovative work.

The recent revision made it clear that one of the patent legislative aims is to promote scientific and technological progress and innovation work, laying a solid legal foundation for implementing the Decision of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Strengthening Technological Innovation and Developing High-Technology and Realizing Industrialization and including the patent work in the technological innovative system. According to the new Patent Law, State-owned enterprises and institutions, as the mainstays of market competition, will enjoy equal treatment as non-State enterprises and institutions in the application for patent and in the rights and duties related to acquisition of patents. This helps increase the control power of the State economy in the national economy, so that the State economy will play a better leading role in the national economy. At the same time, the recent revision, acting on the Party's principle of encouraging the participation of technology and other production elements in the distribution of profits, again made a reasonable delineation of service invention and clearly defined that service inventors should be given remuneration. This helps guide scientific and technical personnel to gear their work to the market, pose their research topics in light of market demands, it also helps work units to make full use of their equipment and other material conditions. Meanwhile, the combination of the interests of scientific and technical personnel with implementation of their invention and creation will facilitate the further mobilization of the enthusiasm of scientific and technological personnel for engaging in and implementing their invention and creation and expedite the close integration of technology with economy. These revisions will definitely play a major role in stimulating the technological innovative work, which takes patent as an important means for market competition, it will also facilitate the formation of the industries with independent intellectual property rights and competitive advantages.

In order to construct a better environment for the technological innovation work, the revised Patent Law adds some stipulations on providing more effective legal protections for patent right holders. It has, from various aspects, perfected judicial and administrative law enforcement and raised the level of patent protection. Since China instituted the patent system in 1985, it has adopted the method of "coordinated operation of two ways"-- judicial and administrative organizations for the protection of patent rights. This method has not only proved in practice that it conforms with China's national conditions and is practical, but also tallies with the relevant stipulations of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The recent revision adhered to the successful method whose implementation will continue. Meanwhile, in the revision of the Patent Law, on the one hand, we intensified efforts for judicial protection, for example, there are explicit stipulations on the method of calculating the amount of compensation for damage, stipulations were added such as that the patent right holders can, before filing a suit against the act of infringement, apply to the people's court for the adoption of measures to order a halt to relevant acts and to preserve property; on the other hand, through clearly defining the responsibility of the local departments in charge of the patent work, we have straightened out the relations between handling cases, by departments in charge of patent work, of disputes over the infringement of patent rights and exercising administration according to law in a bid to maintain fair competition order and have intensified efforts in investigating and prosecuting false and counterfeit things and crackdown on acts of passing off something to be patent. These revisions will further increase the effects of the method of "coordinated operation of the two ways"-judicial and administrative organizations, thereby constructing a fair, reasonable and orderly market competition environment conducive to enterprise technological innovation.

Whether it is fair and reasonable in the procedures for obtaining and maintaining the patent right is an aspect that must not be neglected in the technological innovation work which regards the acquisition of patent as an important competitive means. In order to further simplify procedures, and speed up the handling of the patent application and disputes over patent, the newly revised Patent Law, besides setting higher demands on the patent administrative department and its re-examination committee under the State Council, made no small reform to the procedures of examination and approval and safeguard of rights from the angle of optimizing procedures, saving resources and reducing the venting of complaints. This will more properly protect the legitimate rights and interests of litigant and provide conveniences for the smooth development of the technological innovative work of the enterprises.

A very important focal point in the revision of the Patent Law is to make the patent work more effectively promote China's scientific and technological innovative work. After 15 years of development, we have accumulated many practical experiences and have gradually found the objective law governing the development of the patent work that conforms with China's national condition. We should say in the recent revision of the Patent Law, we successfully combined the general methods of the patent systems in the world with the specific requirements of a developing socialist country, this not only makes China's Patent Law identical with the standard of the most important intellectual property right accord of the WTO, but also makes the Patent Law more fit in with China's national condition, creating more favorable conditions for the development of China's sci-tech innovative work. We should seize the opportunity, give full play to the role of the patent system, enhance the abilities of Chinese enterprises and institutions to apply patent protection in technological innovation, carry China's technological innovative work to a new stage and expedite China's economic, scientific and technological prosperity and development.

This article is by Our Commentator written on the promulgation of the revised Patent Law.

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