When the Ousibao lighting facilities company develops a new product, its manager Liu Jiaobing goes to the Zhongshan intellectual property rights quick response center to apply for a patent before arranging mass production.

Founded in 2011, the quick response center ranked first in the Pearl River delta in the 2015 assessment of the nation's patent enforcement agencies, according to a report released last week by the State Intellectual Property Office.

In addition to providing a series of IP services, the center has also helped increase the IP awareness of local entrepreneurs.

Liu started his business 10 years ago in Zhongshan's Guzhen township in Guangdong province, a national manufacturing base of lighting facilities.

"The market was in chaos then, with competitors copying each other's product designs," he said. "Our company made its first fortune by copying others, too."

The center has organized many free training programs for lighting facility company owners since its establishment. Liu said it was then that the local companies started to realize how important design patents are for a product.

Liu expanded his design team in 2012 and started to pay increasing attention to product research and development and patent protection. His company now owns more than 30 design patents. In 2015 alone, 25 competitors were investigated for violating Ousibao's patents.

Before the center was founded, it was common for companies to suffer losses even if they won a lawsuit, Liu said, because filing a lawsuit is expensive and takes a long time.

Now, all he needs are patent certificates and evidence to prove another company's infringement, and enforcement officers from the center will ask the infringer to remove the products immediately.

"The force and speed of the center when handling infringements make those companies that pay attention to patent protection focus on product development and worry about nothing more," Liu said. "The business environment is far better now."

Hou Yumei, director of the center, said one of its major advantages is convenience, and it has quick mechanisms for rights protection and granting patents.

The center offers one-stop services to local companies by combining administrative enforcement, the IP circuit court and the mediation system. Infringements can be solved in as little as a month.

The center has initiated electronic patent authorization, allowing a design patent to be granted in a week, so a new product can go on the market quickly.

The center has also introduced a design patent search system that is open to local companies for free. The system shows images of designs with descriptions.

"Companies search for patents before developing a new product to check if similar designs already exist so they can avoid infringements," said Cai Rihui, an official from the Zhongshan Science and Technology Bureau.

Producing over 70 percent of lighting facilities on the Chinese market, Guzhen companies filed more than 23,000 patent applications in the past five years, with double-digit annual growth.

In 2015, 423 IP lawsuits were filed in the township, doubling the number of the previous year and accounting for 25 percent of the provincial number.

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(China Daily 05/25/2016 page17)