Intellectual property awards recognize inventors, designers

The State Intellectual Property Office announced the annual winners of China's top patent awards in Beijing on Monday.

In cooperation with the World Intellectual Property Organization, "we present the WIPO-SIPO Awards for Outstanding Chinese Patented Inventions and Industrial Designs to rights owners, inventors and designers who have made marked contributions to patent creation, use, protection and management", SIPO Commissioner Shen Changyu said at the ceremony.

Selected from more than 1,150 candidates from around the country, more than any previous year in the event's history, five received gold awards for their industrial designs and 20 inventions and utility models, a type of patent featuring a shorter valid term and less stringent requirements.

They cover a wide range of sectors, including energy, chemicals, metallurgy, autos, rail transportation, telecommunications, robotics, aircraft and spacecraft, biopharmaceuticals, medical equipment and electronics.

The award-winning projects together generated 30.4 billion yuan ($4.38 billion) in profits.

Among them is technology developed by the Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering, part of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.

The patented technology from the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System research program was created to prevent spacecraft collisions in the case of intensive launch, said Yang Hui, a BeiDou chief designer.

"It has expanded China's proprietary BeiDou navigational network to a higher level," she said.

As one of the industry's core researchers, the institute has developed more than 100 spacecraft and undertaken R&D tasks concerning the Bei-Dou system, manned space flight and lunar exploration. It was granted more than 770 patents this year alone.

Another gold winner, a new type of coke dry quenching technology - also known as CDQ technology - developed by ACRE Coking and Refractory Engineering Consulting Corp has been implemented in more than 100 coking facilities in China and abroad.

A pillar of the chemical and metallurgical industries, the coking sector was traditionally known for its heavy pollution and resource consumption.

The technology has helped to reduce emissions by 13 million tons of carbon dioxide and 130,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, said Yu Zhendong, chairman of the company.

By 2015, the water it saved amounted to 62 million tons and the saved electricity could accommodate the yearly domestic power consumption of a city of 5 million people, Yu said.

"Technological and industrial revolutions are one of the hardest to control, yet we have to face them," he said. "That is the motivation driving us into proprietary IP research and technological innovation."

WIPO data shows that China ranked top of the world in patent, trademark and industrial design applications last year.

Industrial designs worldwide increased by 21.3 percent in 2015 from a year earlier, mainly driven by the robust growth in China, which contributed roughly half of the globe's total, said Wang Binying, deputy director-general of WIPO.

Commissioner Shen said China has become the first country whose annual invention patent filings exceeded 1 million. Its valid invention patent inventory has also surpassed the 1-million benchmark, making China the third country after the United States and Japan to do so, he added.

"The high-quality core patent output does not only lie in the height of innovation, but is also related to multifaceted factors including protections' effects, uses' benefits and management capabilities."