The 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25) for East China's Shanghai city recently set new development goals for the city's intellectual property sector -- with the aim that by 2025, the number of high-value invention patents per 10,000 people should reach about 30 -- according to local media reports.

Compared with the city's development goals for the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), the number of invention patents per 10,000 people, which used to measure the city's innovation capacity, has been replaced by the number of high-value invention patents per 10,000 people.

According to officials, by adding the goal of high-value, the city's emphasis on invention patents will transform from quantity to "effective quantity".

Official documents indicate that the identification of high-value invention patents must follow specific criteria.

These include the stipulation that the patent must be included in a strategic emerging field authorized by the China National Intellectual Property Administration and within the terms of validity, have a patent of the same family overseas, have a maintenance term of more than 10 years, have a license to others to implement the revenue or realize the pledge financing, or have won the National Science and Technology Award or China Patent Award.

Officials said that with the addition of those constraints, the goal is obviously harder to reach, but the number can better reflect the city's innovation capacity.