New platform facilitates industrial design protection
A new national public service platform focusing on intellectual property for industrial designs was launched at Mengqi, an industrial design-themed town in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, on Sunday.
“It is the first platform of its kind nationwide, providing support for design studios and related businesses and helping to shield them from infringement,” said Liu Ning, president of the China Industrial Design Association, at the launch ceremony.
Liu Chuntian, president of the China Law Society’s Intellectual Property Law Association who also heads the IP school at Renmin University of China, has been appointed chief adviser to the platform. Another 13 experts serve as its senior adviser.
Mengqi is located at Liangzhu New City under the administration of Hangzhou, hometown of scientist Shen Kuo during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), so it was named after one of Shen’s books.
As the host of the second World Industrial Design Conference in 2018, the town is home to a great number of businesses specializing in industrial design.
Leveraging the town’s strengths in industrial resources, design studios and human resources, the platform provides expert advice and support for IP creation, operation and protection in the industrial design sector.
The new utility will, in turn, aid Mengqi to take the industrial high ground worldwide, local officials said.
The move came as a spur to the long-term sustainable development of top-level designers and renowned design businesses that have been drawn to the town, as the platform based in Mengqi will help to sharpen their IP edge, Hangzhou Daily quoted Jiang Xudong, deputy director of the administrative committee of Liangzhu New City, as saying.
Chen Wen, founder and CEO of Shan-jia, a local kitchenware designer, told the Hangzhoubased newspaper: “Property is a primary motivation for a designer to create. I believe the platform will inject more vigor into the domestic industrial design industry.”
Liu said related businesses have developed on a fast track over the past decade. The momentum has attracted a host of capital and professionals to the sector.
Data from the National Intellectual Property Administration show that some 709,000 industrial design applications were filed in China last year, an increase of 12.7 percent from 2017. Of the filings, 20,000 were from foreign applicants.
While China has not joined the Hague System, an international agreement on registration of industrial designs, the country has ranked No 1 worldwide in terms of annual filings in the sector for years, according to statistics by the World Intellectual Property Organization.
The number of the design applications filed with NIPA last year accounted for more than half of the world’s total, according to the World Intellectual Property Indicators
2019 report released by WIPO in October.
The Chinese government is attaching increasing importance to the industrial design sector. In October, 13 central government departments released a special action plan for 2019-22 to improve design in the domestic manufacturing industry.
The plan calls for incorporating high-quality, eco-friendly and sustainable designs into production, and encourages integrated innovation and comprehensive use of new materials, technologies, production procedures and business models.
Its goal is to make breakthroughs in original designs during the four years in such industries as advanced computer-controlled machines, industrial robots, automobiles, power facilities, petrochemicals equipment and heavy duty machines. Environmental protection and artificial intelligence are also among the key sectors.
An industrial design represents a way of thinking. It can promote cooperation with other sectors, Liu Guanzhong, a senior professor with the Academy of Arts and Design at Tsinghua University, told Xinhua News Agency.
“Likened to a pair of wings, technology and design work together to help our country take off,” Liu said, adding that design helps to promote new technology and to apply it to people’s lives.