A couple of weeks ago we participated in the Second Session of Shanghai Intellectual Property Practice Summit. The summit aimed at providing Chinese companies input on how to protect and utilize their IP in the best possible way outside China. It was supported by Shanghai Pudong Intellectual Property Bureau and Shanghai Pudong Science & Technology Association, hosted by Shanghai Pudong Intellectual Property Protection Association and organized by Shanghai Shenxin Law Firm.
There were several very interesting presentations covering different juridistictions all over the world. Our contribution was made by Maria Stenbäck who gave a presentation on European patent prosecution, including the Unitary patent and the Unified patent court .
The conference confirmed our earlier experiences that there is a huge interest in IP matters in China and that all people involved – from companies, universities and the government – are very interested in learning more about all advantages IP protection can bring and how they can use them to their benefit. The Chinese patent law has existed in less than 30 years, but in these quite few years China has come a very long way in providing possibilities to protect intellectual property and to defend intellectual property rights, and further progress is being made at an impressive speed. It is also very fascinating to see how important promotion of inventions are regarded from different parts of the society – from the “Beijing spirit” characterized by the four words patriotism, innovation, inclusiveness and virtue, which can be found around the capital, to the current five year plan.
We are looking forward to our next visit to this interesting region, to continue following the developments in this area.
