The Greater China IP Updates ¡V July 2022

By Lyndon 

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Oppo Ranks Second Amongst Chinese Patent Applicants in Europe

In 2021, Oppo, the number one smartphone vendor in China, filed 1,057 patent applications at the Munich-based European Patent Office, ranking second among Chinese companies after Huawei.  Oppo was also among several Chinese companies that were on the list of Top 50 patent applications in the U.S. in 2021.  The founder and CEO, Chen Ming Yong, says this is the result of an increase in Research and Development in recent years as the company transforms from smartphone vendor to a tech pioneer.  Beefing up its portfolio of global patents has seen progress initially in the smartphone sector with new advanced models such as the Reno 7-series, the new A-series, and the high-end foldable Find N model.  The company plans to recruit more than 2,000 research and development talents this year as it intends to boost its focus on hardware, software, semiconductors, computer vision, speech semantics, big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence engineering.  With this additional staff, the total R&D personnel will reach 10,000.  There will also be a push to focus on underlying technologies such as chips which are a crucial foundation for hardware.  The increase in investment in R&D is a trend seen throughout the tech sector in China and an indication of the intense competitiveness to expand market share.

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China Pushes IP Development in Bio-Economy

The Fourteenth Five-Year Plan has a section devoted to Bio-Economy Development and was published in May 2022.  It stresses the need to strengthen IP protection and develop new patents by the transformation and application of sci-tech achievements.  China led the world in patent filings in biological breeding when last surveyed in September 2021.  Also, China has filed the most patent applications related to Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics.  Attention is also being focused on modern applications of traditional Chinese medicine.  By using modern technologies and methods, new features and advantages of Chinese medicine are being developed to achieve maximum potential and reach a higher level as a source of knowledge and IP.  To assist in this endeavor, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) has officially approved the establishment of the National Intellectual Property Operation Center for Synthetic Biology.  Relying on the resources of Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the center has built the Patent Pool for Synthetic Biology Enabling Technologies, and other patent pools in order to set up platforms to duly release patent portfolios and promote the marketization and industrialization of synthetic biotechnologies.

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