This book evaluates the risks that China’s intellectual property (IP) regime poses to innovation. China's IP regime has been heavily criticized as potentially stifling innovation. However, the country’s innovation capabilities have risen significantly and major reforms have recently been made to its IP regime. How risky, really, is China's IP regime for innovation? This book investigates this question at different units of analysis based on a multidisciplinary assessment involving law, management, economics, and political science. Specifically, it critically appraises China's substantive IP laws, measures for boosting patent quantity and quality, measures for transmitting and exploiting technological knowledge, new experimental IP measures, and China's systems for administering and enforcing IP. Practitioners and scholars from various backgrounds can benefit from the up-to-date analysis as well as the practical managerial tools provided, including risk assessment matrices for businesses and recommendations for institutional reform.

Following decades in which China's approach to technology has been to imitate, the country is now transforming itself to become innovation-oriented. This pioneering study examines whether patents play a similar role in promoting innovation in China as they do in the West, exploring the interplay between patents and China's biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries in particular.

This study’s statistical analysis shows that patent quality and innovation in China deserve improvement, and an in-depth legal, management science, and economic analysis in the study shows that various patent-related policies and practices actually hamper patent quality and innovation in China. Over 50 recommendations for reform are provided. The study is divided into four chapters, summaries of which are as follows: Although China became the world leader in quantity of domestically filed patent applications in 2011, the quality of these patents needs improvement. Also, while certain innovation in China is rising, the country’s actual innovation appears over-hyped by some sources. There appears to be an overly heavy focus on government-set quantitative patent targets in China, which can hamper patent quality and innovation. This overemphasis involves over 10 national-level and over 150 municipal/provincial quantitative patent targets, mostly to be met by 2015, which are also linked to performance evaluations for SoEs, Party officials and government ministries, universities and research institutes, and other entities. China has a wide-range of other policies, many of which are at least partially meant to encourage patents, that can actually discourage quality patents, and highest-quality patents in particular, and innovation. Examples of these policies include a variety of measures with requirements for “indigenous intellectual property rights” that are linked to financial incentives (many of which are unrelated to government procurement); a range of other government-provided financial incentives for patent development (e.g. certain patent filing subsidies); inappropriate inventor remuneration rules; discriminatory standardization approaches; and a wide range of others. There are a host of concerns surrounding rules and procedures for patent application review and those for enforcement of patent disputes that can hamper building of quality patents and innovation in China. These include concerns about abuse of patent rights, difficulties invalidating utility models, and a wide range of other issues.

'The rapid evolution of China from an "emerging" to a mature intellectual property jurisdiction has far-reaching implications for the law, policy and practice of IP, and their links with competition and technology law. Produced in the year China rose to fourth rank globally as user of the international patent system, this volume is an invaluable guide for the policymaker, the analyst and the practitioner alike, setting a thorough exposition of the substantive law and its application within a broader policy context, and offering a comprehensive, timely overview of an IP system just at the time it begins to assume central significance on the world stage.' - Antony Taubman, Director, IP Division, WTO

This authoritative report analyzes IP activity around the globe. Drawing on 2019 filing, registration and renewals statistics from national and regional IP offices and WIPO, it covers patents, utility models, trademarks, industrial designs, microorganisms, plant variety protection and geographical indications. The report also draws on survey data and industry sources to give a picture of activity in the publishing industry.

In Patent Litigation in China, Douglas Clark provides U.S. and other non-Chinese practitioners with an overview of the patent litigation system in China and with strategic commentary to ensure better decision-making by those responsible for bringing or defending patent actions in China.