Liangjiang leads in intellectual property protection

The Digital Economic Industrial Park in Liangjiang. [Photo by Li Qian]

Liangjiang New Area has achieved a remarkable feat by ranking first in Chongqing's intellectual property index for three consecutive years, as announced at the city's IP conference on April 7. 

By 2024, Liangjiang had attracted 268 IP service institutions and hosted 223 national and municipal IP demonstration and advantage enterprises. It has also seen a significant increase in innovation, with the number of newly authorized invention patents reaching 2,336, an 8.8 percent year-on-year growth. 

Liangjiang leads the city in several key metrics, including the number of effective invention patents per 10,000 people, national IP demonstration and advantage enterprises, and IP service institutions. This strong performance is mainly due to strategic measures implemented by the authorities. 

The area has launched a trademark business acceptance window, achieving the highest monthly acceptance volume in the city. It also established Chongqing's first government-led IP association and, in collaboration with BOE Technology Group, created the nation's first government-enterprise cooperative IP research and development center. 

Liangjiang encourages notary institutions to employ advanced technologies such as electronic signatures, data encryption, and blockchain to provide notarization services for IP rights remedies, dispute resolution, and overseas protection. 

The area continuously optimizes collaboration mechanisms. It has established the city's first cross-jurisdictional IP protection mechanism, signing a memorandum of cooperation with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Joint Mediation Research Institute. 

Liangjiang has also developed a comprehensive administrative-judicial linkage model to resolve intellectual property disputes. This mechanism uses the institutional, open, and functional advantages of the Market Supervision Bureau and the People's Court. 

Since its implementation, 29 local stations in the area have resolved 3,989 disputes on-site. The time required for transitioning from administrative complaints and reports to judicial confirmation has been dramatically reduced from 30 days to just 2.5 hours, and the average time for resolving IP disputes has decreased by over 20 days.

Integrating one-click application, mediation, administrative penalties, judicial confirmation, and judicial adjudication has resulted in significant economic savings for the parties involved, totaling 13.29 million yuan ($1.81 million).