Building IP-friendly Belt and Road: Guidance document under preparation

A guidance document is likely to be adopted very soon for increasing Intellectual Property (IP) cooperation among the countries involved in China's One Belt, One Road Initiative. The document would aim to inherit and promote the tradition of the historic Silk Road and advance IP cooperation in the region.
A draft document titled "Common Initiatives for Strengthening Cooperation between Countries along the Belt and Road in the Field of Intellectual Property" was rolled out at a high-level conference held in Beijing on July 21-22. The World Intellectual Property Organisation and several Chinese central government departments including State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the National Copyright Administration and the Ministry of Commerce, along with the Beijing municipal government co-hosted the conference. According to the conference proceedings the document suggested for IP collaboration from the perspective of legal systems, professional services, rights protection, public awareness, training, and information sharing and use.
However, the guideline is designed to help build an IP-friendly ecosystem in the countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, improve their related legal systems and thus promote an environment conducive to innovation and sustainable development. Taking into full consideration the difference in development levels, cultures, innovation capacities and legal systems, the planned statement will reflect the trends of multi-polarity, economic globalisation, cultural diversity and IT-based developments.
The conference documents reflect that with about $21 trillion in economic aggregate, some 29 per cent of the world's total, the countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, most of which are emerging economies, are encouraging innovation to promote growth. Their innovation will become a key growth spot in the regional and even world economy. As IP is playing an increasingly instrumental role in both international trade and the development of countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, the integration of the guideline into the initiative has been a common issue to countenance. The Chinese government has long cooperated on IP with countries along the routes. Shen Changyu, commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of China, recently said that his office had already signed bilateral cooperation agreements with 28 out of 65 core countries involved in the initiative. And China has developed a trilateral cooperation mechanism with its peers in Mongolia and Russia. At the same time, SIPO has partnered with regional organisations including the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and the Visegrad Group, an alliance comprising four central European countries -  the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
The international cooperation covers a wide range, including patent filing processing, international training, data exchanges and doc-umentation sharing. It has made marked progress and been widely acclaimed among the countries involved in the initiative, Shen said.
Against such a backdrop, the Beijing conference gathered together IP leaders from 50 countries and international organisations involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, besides representatives of the business community and the academic circle in China. They discussed how to improve regional cooperation for "a more general preferential, inclusive, and balanced international IP system'. The event provided an effective communication channel and also helped create an IP-friendly environment for companies entering countries involved in the Belt and Road.
Chinese government data shows that Chinese companies made direct investments worth $14.82 billion in 49 countries in the region last year, an 18.2 per cent increase from 2014, and accounting for 12.6 per cent of total direct overseas investments by Chinese investors.
China has in recent years seen growing innovation exchanges with the economies involved in the Belt and Road Initiative. Belt and Road Initiative refers to the development of the Silk Road (21st Century Maritime Silk Road) proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013. The increase in the number of countries involved reflects the faith the involved countries have in China's market and IP rights protection climate. Last year, SIPO received more than 3,100 patent filings from 41 countries involved in the initiatives, including some 2,800 from top 10 sources, which together accounted for 90.6 per cent of all filings.   Among the countries, Singapore ranked first for its number of filings, followed by Israel, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia. The lowest 19 countries in terms of filings each posted less than 10 patent applications annually. At the same time, nearly 3,290 patent applications from China were filed in 15 countries along the Belt and Road routes, with IT, telecommunications and other electrical equipment manufacturing listed as the main sectors in which patent applications were filed. Also among the top 10 industrial sectors in Chinese patent filings in the region were machinery manufacturing and healthcare. All of these are priority sectors listed in the "Made in China 2025" policy. The data also shows that Chinese companies are accelerating their pace of globalisation.
However, the technological focus in the (Belt and Road) region is on fundamental patents concerning international telecommunications technology standards in such sectors as cloud computing, big data and 5G/4G networks, as well as other core patents related to key technologies in the telecommunications industry.
While advancing cooperation in developing infrastructure such as transportation facilities, China is campaigning vigorously for the building of smart cities worldwide. It is also deploying IP resources in a variety of sectors, including the IT-backed transport network.
The countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative need technological cooperation and commonly accepted rules for intellectual property protection. After all, communication and connectivity are the keys to the initiative.  
Dr. Muhammad Abdul Mazid, former Secretary to GoB and Chairman of NBR, is Chairman of Chittagong Stock Exchange Limited.
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