Under the guidance of the China National Intellectual Property Administration – or CNIPA for short – the Shanghai Intellectual Property Administration, SIPA, located in the city of Shanghai in East China, has been making major moves to improve its services.

In recent years it has been streamlining its administration and delegating powers, improving its regulations and upgrading its services in the intellectual property or IP sector.

SIPA is understood to be continuing to optimize its services for IP. It has been working to enable people to access government services via a single website. Last year, 11 government services were added to the website.

In addition, it is promoting the establishment of one-stop service windows and set up the first comprehensive business window for patent and trademark business at CNIPA in Shanghai. It has established comprehensive service windows in the administrative services hall of the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Market Supervision, the Lin-gang Special Area of China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone and the Hongqiao Central Business District.

SIPA is also focusing on strengthening its IP protection services. Since the establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Shanghai Service in October 2019, with the support of SIPA, it has accepted 27 cases for foreign-related IP disputes and concluded 12 cases.

SIPA is accelerating the establishment of the China (Shanghai) Intellectual Property Protection Center and is building grassroots IP protection service sites throughout the city. Last year, 102 IP dispute mediation sites and 12 IP protection assistance work centers or stations were set up locally.

In addition, SIPA continues to expand its IP utilization services. It has recognized four national IP information service centers of universities, six WIPO Technology and Innovation Support Centers (TISC) and six Shanghai IP information service sites.

Moreover, service cases involving Shanghai Library and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have been selected as excellent cases for national IP information services in the past two years.