Turning new ideas into actual products

More than 500 delegates attended a forum on Tuesday in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, focusing on intellectual property commercialization and innovation in finance. Attendees included government officials, scholars and executives from companies, financial institutions and IP agencies.

Commercialization involves all the processes required to turn IPs - such as patents and copyrights - into products available for consumers, including licensing, transfers and industrialization.

"It is the only way to fully unleash the value of IP rights and it is the purpose of all IP work," said He Hua, deputy commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office.

He said that SIPO has made a series of attempts, including the establishment of IP commercialization and trading centers, as well as nurturing IP-intensive industries, to seek new IP operation models to realize higher value in the industry.

Besides the main public IP service platform based in Beijing, two pilot IP commercialization centers have been founded in Xi'an and Zhuhai, as part of the national IP operation network. The Xi'an, Shaanxi province, institution specializes in the integration of patents and technology from the civilian and military sectors. The one in Zhuhai focuses on innovative IP financing methods.

SIPO has also invested in 20 IP operation organizations nationwide and has supported four provinces in their efforts to launch patent-pledge loan risk funds, He said.

The value of patent-pledge loans in China totaled more than 2 billion yuan ($303.9 million) over the past five years, with an average annual increase of 33 percent.

Chen Hongbing, head of the World Intellectual Property Organization's China office, said China has made "remarkable achievements in IP after 30 years of development, and is becoming a strong IP powerhouse".

Chen said the Pearl River Delta - where Zhuhai is located - already has a strong foundation, with its advantageous geographical position in the center of the Hong Kong-Macao-Guangdong region. "Zhuhai's IP operation emphasizes innovative finance and international trade, aiming at the excavation of IP value."

Universities and research institutions are major generators of patents, but less than 10 percent of their patents have become products on the market, said Song Hefa, a researcher at the Institute of Policy and Management at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

He said some effective IP commercialization models include patent pools, patent auctions, and crowdfunding.

"China should strengthen IP operation analysis to identify the patents that are worth commercialization on the one hand, and find profitable operation models on the other hand," he said. "But ultimately, it depends on people - comprehensive IP operation personnel."