IP Protection

Shanghai’s first intellectual property protection center was set up on July 25 in the city’s Pudong New District.

The center will launch a service to enable faster examination of patents and decrease the authorization time to less than 15 months from the original 30 months, said Lu Guoqiang, Director General of the Shanghai Intellectual Property Administration.

Pudong is home to burgeoning high-end equipment manufacturing and bio-pharmaceutical industries, where demand for intellectual property rights service is high.

In 2016, the enterprises in Pudong filed more than 9,500 patent applications in the high-end equipment manufacturing industry and 2,300 in the bio-pharmaceutical industry.

A complaint channel will also be launched to investigate suspected infringements of patents, trademarks and copyrights.

The center will work with Shanghai intellectual property court to enhance intellectual property rights protection. Resources.

Meanwhile, an extra 8.09 million mu (539,333 hectares) of land was set aside for construction in 2016, up 4.4 percent year on year, a large part of which will be used for infrastructure construction, said the ministry.

In 2016, the amount of new land used for highway and railway construction rose 30.7 percent and 102.8 percent, respectively, from a year ago.

China must retain at least 1.865 billion mu (124 million hectares) of farmland by 2020, under a new target set by the ministry in 2016, which is above a government red line of 1.8 billion mu (120 million hectares).