The plaque was jointly unveiled by Zhang Daohong and Liao Tao

Zhang Daohong and Liao Tao jointly unveiled the plaque to mark the official opening of the national platform that features the trading and management of both civilian and military intellectual property (or IP for short) -- Photo by Jiang Zhaojun

According to our correspondent Jiang Zhaojun, on December 17, 2015, the "National Civilian & Military Intellectual Property Trading & Management Platform" was formally launched at the Summit on the Trading and Management of Both Civilian and Military Intellectual Property, held in Xi'an High-Tech Industries Development Zone (or the High-Tech Zone for short). Zhang Daohong, Deputy Governor of Shaanxi Province, and Liao Tao, Deputy Director of the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (or the SIPO for short), jointly unveiled the plaque to mark a milestone for China's IP industry. Among those who attended the ceremony were Li Jing, Deputy Mayor of Xi'an City, and Xing Xin, Deputy Director of the Management Committee of Xi'an High-Tech Industries Development Zone.

In 2014, according to the overall plans laid by the Party Central Committee and the State Council, the Ministry of Finance and the SIPO decided to launch a series of pilot projects to provide services for organizations engaged in the trading and management of intellectual property in a market-driven fashion. It had since been decided that three national IP trading and management platforms would be set up in Beijing, Guangdong Province, and Shaanxi Province. The platform hosted in Shaanxi Province will process both civilian and military IP, and will bring national defense industry IP resources from Shaanxi Province and other western Chinese regions together, with a view to promoting the transfer of these technological achievements as IP from one entity to another and their conversion into a usable form and improving the ability to apply IP; moreover, sticking to the principle of "letting the government not only take the lead in a joint effort by multiple parties to operate the platform in a market-driven fashion but also guide that effort by introducing policies, promoting the sharing of resources, and fostering innovation in the way that platform is managed," the platform aims to build itself into a premier IP trading and management platform that encourages the sharing of civilian and military scientific and technological resources, the matching of the supply and the demand sides in both civilian and military fields of technology, and the mutual development of both civilian and military industries, and help transform the advantage in scientific and technological resources into innovative, industrial, and economical advantages; as a result, the platform is expected to help the State find a path to converting national defense industry IP and technological achievements and results into tangible things, and therefore make contributions to China's effort to build itself into an innovation-driven country.

According to sources, the platform in Shaanxi Province is expected to be basically built up by 2017 and when completed, will attract and bring together more than 100 domestic and foreign IP service providers; by 2020, the platform will have generated RMB 10 billion in IP transactions; furthermore, it is expected to attract more social capital to the transfer and conversion of patented technological achievements and help over 50 major civilian or military patented technologies become industrialized, thus resulting in an annual increase of over RMB 20 billion in revenues. All parties involved will make a concerted effort to build the Xi'an-based platform into a first-class center that serves not only western China but also the rest of the country and even the world, and where all sorts of IP gather and are traded and managed.