Zibo city – located in East China's Shandong province – saw major developments in its intellectual property sector last year, as revealed by a white paper on the city's advancement of IP protection issued on April 25.
The prefecture-level city granted 1,389 invention patents in 2021, an increase of 30.1 percent year-on-year. It also received 40 PCT – Patent Cooperation Treaty – international patent applications. By the end of 2021, the ownership of high-value invention patents per 10,000 people in Zibo had reached 4.86.
In 2021, the China National Intellectual Property Administration gave its approval for Zibo to set up service windows in the city's municipal offices to process trademark items. Last year there were 16,841 new trademark applications and 14,079 new registered trademarks in Zibo.
By the end of 2021, the city had a total of 51 geographical indication trademarks, covering nine categories of characteristic products in six districts and counties in the city.
In terms of copyright work, 9,419 copyrighted works were registered in Zibo in 2021, a huge year-on-year increase of 986 percent.
In addition, 25 enterprises were selected by the Zibo municipal government to develop influential enterprises with intellectual property rights in 2021, taking the total number of these enterprises in the city to 203.
