"The report at the 18th CPC National Congress advocates implementing intellectual property strategies and strengthening intellectual property protection, while summarizing the experience of China's intellectual property development in the past ten years. In another word, China has been going through the best development period of intellectual property protection," said Tian Lipu, Commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office, when interviewed by ChinaNewsweek.

When reviewing the statement on intellectual property protection in the working reports of the last two party congresses, Tian noted, "In 2002, the report at the 16th CPC National Congress proposed to improve the intellectual property protection regime, which was a significant breakthrough, while in 2007, the report at the 17th CPC National Congress explicitly advised implementing intellectual property strategies, which demonstrated a fact that the Party had made an overall program on promoting intellectual property progress at national level. This year, the report reiterated the importance of implementing intellectual property strategies and strengthening intellectual property protection, combining intellectual property strategies with the scientific outlook on development. "

According to Tian, in 2003, the State Intellectual Property Office took up to develop the national intellectual property strategies; in 2006, the theme of the 31st plenary session of the Political Bureau of the General Committee of the Communist Party of China was "International Intellectual Property Protection and the Legislation and Institutional Construction of China's Intellectual Property Protection", which reflected the great attention paid by the Party to intellectual property development; in 2008, the Outline of the National Intellectual Property Strategies was promulgated, which permeated through every area of the socio-economic development.

Tian noted that based on statistics, China has become a prominent country in intellectual property rather than a strong nation in this regard, because there was no leading inventions and most innovations were generated from improvement rather than creation. He stressed that the key task of intellectual property protection in China was to constantly improve the protection mechanisms and enhance the protection force.

From October 2010 to June 2011, China conducted a nine-month special campaign on cracking down upon intellectual property infringement and manufacture and sales of counterfeit and shoddy commodities across the country, effectively combating intellectual property crimes. During the campaign, the intellectual property enforcement departments at all levels filed a total of 156 thousand cases involving 3.43 billion yuan and destroyed 9,135 illicit lairs.

On the other hand, the State Intellectual Property Office has been actively exploring an effective long-term intellectual property protection mechanism. For instance, the Office has set up a protection center in Zhongshan, Guangdong province, which was the first organ designed to handle intellectual property issues in a single industry. By building such an IP aid center, the Office explored a method to harness intellectual property for the boost of regional core competitiveness.

When talking about major challenges, Tian said frankly that the biggest challenge was that intellectual property protection needed long-term and arduous efforts and was difficult to be done overnight. The intellectual property system has been enforced in China for less than 30 years and the public awareness of innovation still needs to be increased, which might need constant efforts of several generations. Besides protection, the creation, utilization and management of intellectual properties also need a long-term process.

Tian pointed out that intellectual property protection should faithfully serve scientific development and economic development mode transformation by effectively and efficiently enforcing the protection strategies so as to build China into an innovation-driven country.