On July 30, 2020, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Office in China and the Beijing Municipal Intellectual Property Office, and the Bluetech Clean Air Alliance (BCAA), organized the second IP training event of "Innovation for a Green Future" and the outcome was successful.
On behalf of WIPO GREEN, Ms. Marion “Amy” Dietterich, Director of the Global Challenges Division of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), addressed during her opening remarks, that it was a great pleasure to welcome everyone to the special training event “Innovation for a Green Future” in partnership with BCAA. She expressed the hope that this training event, as well as the one that came before it, will help to promote the development and deployment of green technologies, and in particular, fuel cell technology, as will be the topic of today’s event. WIPO GREEN is happy to work with BCAA to promote clean air technologies, and we look forward to deepening our cooperation on this, as well as other areas in the years to come.
Li Qiongfang, Head of the International Exchange and Cooperation Department of the Beijing Intellectual Property Office, mentioned that recently, the Beijing government released the “Beijing City’s Implementation Plan for Building a Market-Oriented Green Technology Innovation System”. In the future, Beijing will be built into a green technology innovation center with regional radiation and international influence. Green technological innovation is inseparable from the application, registration and use of intellectual property rights such as patented technology and trademarks. The Beijing Municipal Intellectual Property Office has paid great attention to green technology and green innovation in recent years. This training event focuses on the Madrid System for the international registration of marks in the international intellectual property system, as well as the current status and prospects of technology and intellectual property rights in the hydrogen energy and fuel cell industry. It is hoped that this training activity will enable the representatives of enterprises and institutions who actively signed up for the training to get a better understanding of the intellectual property system, thus promoting the development of green innovation through comprehensive use of the intellectual property system."
Ms. Zhang Junqin, Counsellor of WIPO China Office, gave a lecture on the international trademark protection (Madrid) system. During the meeting, Ms. Zhang Junqin placed emphasis on the fact that The Madrid International Trademark Registration System was created in 1881 and is still the world’s only worldwide trademark protection system. This system makes it possible for trademark owners to obtain trademark protection in multiple countries at the same time by submitting only one application to one Office using one language at a low fee. At the same time, Mr. Zhang also pointed out “the main reason that trademarks are being preemptively registered is due to insufficient awareness of active protection. 2018 Statistics shows that comparing the number of valid domestic trademark registrations in their own countries (China, the United States, and Switzerland), and the number of international registrations in these countries through Madrid, revealed that 45% of U.S. companies will expand and register abroad based on this trademark after they have registered their domestic trademarks, and 75% of Swiss companies will do the same. However, in China, only less than 1% of domestic enterprises go for international registration."
Fuel cells have received significant attentions in recent years, and the "Ten Cities and One Thousand Vehicles" plan for hydrogen energy vehicle will be launched soon. With the advancement of fuel cell industry and the development of hydrogen-cored energy storage, hydrogen, as a key energy source in the three fields of transportation, power generation, and energy storage, is gaining increasing importance. Its future position is expected to be comparable to petrochemical resources, whose market value has the potential to exceed trillions. A special session, "Fuel Cell and Intellectual Property", was set up in this training.
Mr. Xie Hongxing, Director of BCAA, gave a lecture entitled "Progress Analysis of Fuel Cell Patent Applications". Mr. Xie pointed out that research institutes and technology companies in the field of fuel cell and technology companies are not fully aware of the importance of carrying out an international layout of patents. As a result, many patents are only applied in China without international patent layout consideration, thus losing business development opportunities abroad. Moreover, fuel cell patents filed by Chinese enterprises and research institutes are mainly application-oriented technology, which lacks patents about basic and core technology compared with those in Japan and the United States. In response to the protection of intellectual property rights of fuel cell enterprises, Mr. Xie, recommended that Improving patent quality is the prerequisite for all patent work. Many research institutes in China are researching fuel cells. At this stage, it is necessary to increase investment and focus on the cultivation of high-value patents in the scientific research process. During the training, Ms. Yu Dan, Project Director of Beijing CATARC Technology Co., Ltd., China Automotive Technology and Research Center, gave a detailed introduction and analysis of the development of hydrogen fuel cell technology on a global scale, then predicted and forecasted the development trend of fuel cell vehicles. Ms. Yu Dan concluded that "hydrogen energy is an important way to support the large-scale application of renewable energy. Its important position and role in the future global energy structure reform have been gradually paid attention to by developed countries such as Japan, the United States, and Germany. At present, China, Germany, Russia, and other countries are also carrying out demonstration applications of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the field of rail transit. In the future, hydrogen fuel cells will cover multiple vehicles in sea, land, and air. At the same time, it will play an important role in power generation and building heat-electricity co-generation, promoting global energy transformation.
The training event also invited representatives of innovative technology companies and industry experts as guests to form a panel discussion. The guests discussed and exchanged opinions on hydrogen energy, fuel cells, and intellectual property rights from multiple perspectives. Mr. Lu Yuebing, Chairman of the Board of Air Liquide China Holding Co., Ltd. pointed out that from the development in the entire hydrogen energy and fuel cell automobile industry, China has a huge application potential, the largest industrial cluster, and abundant hydrogen energy resources. Policies are also a strong factor supporting the development of hydrogen energy and fuel cell industries in China. Facing the broad market in hydrogen energy and fuel cell automobile, Mr. Wang Haifeng, Chairman of Fenergy Innovation Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd, said that Fenergy, as a company with independent innovation in fuel cell stacks field, also pays great attention to patent application and layout. He mentioned that Technology companies that value R&D will face many practical problems such as shortage of funds, division of patents and trade secrets, and international differences in the overall patent layout. Director Xie Hongxing of BCAA provided a detailed explanation on why start-ups in the fuel cell field should increase investment in the cultivation of high-value patents, and pointed out that start-up technology companies should strengthen intellectual property risk management in scientific research cooperation. Ms. Yu Dan suggested that companies should actively strengthen R&D and patent cooperation with relevant research institutes. On the one hand, this reduces repetitive R&D between institutes and companies, and save R&D costs while consequently it helps to smooth the transformation channels from science to industry, strengthening the layout of patents.
This training activity is part of WIPO GREEN local activities in China. The event was supported by the United Nations Development Program(UNDP), China Association of Environmental Protection Industry, Energy Conservation Technology Promotion Committee of China Energy Conservation Association, Council of Industry and Technology Alliances in Z-Park, University of Science and Technology Beijing National Science Park, BUAA Tianhui Incubator, China Electric Vehicle Charging Technology and Industry Alliance, Nanjing YRD ECO Development.R.I.Co.Ltd, Plug and Play China, Hanhai Jiaxing S&T Entrepreneurship Incubator Co., Ltd, C-Team, China-France (Hefei) Technology Innovation Center/M-Hub Accelerator and other institutions. More than 150 people including researchers, technology companies, and investors from the green technology field participated in the training. This training is the second event of a series of training activities. In the future, the organizers will continue to launch online and offline IP training on green technology.
