Patent Information Annual Conference (PIAC) 2016 Convenes in Beijing
The 2016 Patent Information Annual Conference (PIAC) has taken place on 19-20 September. The conference, in its 7th year now, carried this year the theme of patent operation as a boost to supply-side reform.
During the opening address, Mr. Shen Changyu, commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), pointed to the fact that China had become the third country after the US and Japan with valid invention patents exceeding one million, and against this backdrop the key thing to do would be active utilisation of the patent resources. He also mentioned that SIPO would place the focus of its work during the 13th five-year-plan period (2016-2020) on building and offering to the public free and low-cost IP information service platforms that converged the basic information across different areas of IP including patent, trademark, and copyright, as well as on betterment of IP service standards and facilitating IP services toward high-end development.
This year's PIAC gathered 4,000-plus representatives, including both domestic and foreign government officials, in-house counsel, industry experts, academicians, and IP attorneys. Keynote speakers of the conference included Frédéric Caillaud, director of innovation, marketing and communication at National Institute of Industrial Property of France, who talked about facilitating open innovation, patent management, and licensing by combining recent valuation and mapping techniques, while IP counsel from Google, Microsoft, and Lenovo presented on the topics of criticality of patent quality to a well-functioning patent system, creating partnerships in China's dynamic IP environment, and optimising patent value in China respectively.
The conference also featured breakout sessions on a number of themes such as innovation of patent operation, IP management by open innovation approach, IP big data and utilisation of patent information, and enhancing patent protection in China. In addition, the international patent information product and services exhibition, an integral part of the conference, attracted more than 60 patent information services agencies this year to showcase the latest tools for patent search, patent management and analysis, and machine translation.
