The Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) annual conference 2022 was held in Boao, Hainan province from April 20th to 22nd. As one of the speakers of the forum, Yu Xiang, professor of School of Management and dean of Sino-Europe Institute for Intellectual Property, delivered a speech on " Intellectual Property in Asia: Trends and Opportunities" at the intellectual property sub-forum held on the 20th and then joined the live broadcast of CGTN (China Global Television Network) and was interviewed exclusively at noon on the 21st.
Prof. Yu discussed three topics. First, countries should expand collaboration structures. He believes that through coordinating patent systems, examination standards, and improving examination quality, more Asian countries should create conditions to sign more Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) cooperation agreements. Through information sharing, national patent offices can reduce the workload of repeated examinations, thereby improving the quality, and allowing different countries to speed up the examination process for patent granted invention.
Second, it is necessary to promote the transformation and application of patented technologies through legislation and policies. He pointed out that the open licensing system stipulated can simplify and make negotiating patent license much easier, hence increasing the application of patented technologies. For example, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Thailand, Russia, China, Poland and other countries have relevant legislation.
Third, to further stimulate green technology innovation, many countries, including the UK, the US, KR, Japan, Israel, China and other countries have successively formulated green patent incentive policies with varying degrees with their own characteristics, and stimulated green innovation through measures such as accelerated examination and fee reduction. In addition, Prof. Yu also believes that technologies for preventing and treating major infectious diseases also need to be encouraged referencing the green technology patent system.
For market players, Prof. Yu pointed out that we should seize new IPR opportunities and avoid IPR risks. For example, green innovation technologies and major public health safety prevention technologies are aligned with national incentive policies, and enterprises will gain new intellectual property opportunities; artificial intelligence technology has a wide range of applications. If artificial intelligence that are not safe, fair, or ethical is invented, it poses a great risk, and should be regulated.
Yu Xiang is professor and doctoral supervisor of School of Management, Director General of Sino-European Institute for Intellectual Property of HUST, Director of Chinese-German Institute for Intellectual Property of School of Management; German Humboldt Scholar; Member of Academia Europaea; Vice President of Hubei Normal University.
Source: School of Management
Written by: Zhang Shizhe
Edited by: Chen Yuan, Jiang Jing
Chinese
