China has made notable progress in intellectual property rights protection, which has been widely recognized at home and abroad, said Zhao Gang, deputy head of the National Intellectual Property Administration, on July 24 at a press conference.

A survey shows that social satisfaction with IPR protection in China gets a score of 76.88 in 2018, climbing from 63.69 in 2012.

The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China polled 585 EU companies in China on business confidence this year, and the result indicated that 60 percent of them think China’s administrative and judicial protection of IPR has significantly improved.

Online sales environment and medicine patent enforcement are among the most outstanding improvements in China, a report on international IP index by US Chamber of Commerce showed in March this year.

In recent years, China has stepped up efforts to revise laws and regulations regarding patent, trademark and other IPR terms, intensifying punishment and legal costs for IPR infringement. Special actions for law enforcement have been carried out to crack down on infringement and counterfeiting

In the first half of 2019, China received 78,000 foreign invention patent applications and 127,000 applications for foreign trademarks, an 8.6 percent and 15.4 percent year-on-year growth, respectively. This gaining momentum is expected to continue.

This reflects China’s favorable investment and business environment and a well-run IPR system that can assure foreign enterprises of IPR protection, Zhao Gang said.

In the future, China will further provide IPR with strict, strong and timely protection and treat all market entities equally.

To build a better innovation and business environment, authorities should strengthen communication with small and medium-sized, private and foreign-funded enterprises amid equal treatment and protection for all, Zhao added.