Patent information services need to make better use of the Internet and big data technologies, said Shen Changyu, commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office, at a forum last week.

The State Council released policies this year to advance the Internet Plus initiative, which aims to integrate the Internet with traditional sectors and promote big data-based businesses. Both have close ties with patent information services, Shen said.

Internet Plus provides fresh opportunities and a new platform for the patent information sector, due to improvements in efficiency with online data services and publicity.

Big data technologies, which help improve integration, analysis and further processing of a sea of patent information, provides an innovative approach to developing and using invention documents, he noted.

Shen made the remarks at the Patent Information Annual Conference of China 2015, which was held in Beijing on Sept 15.

The annual event has drawn increasingly wide attention and grown more influential since it was founded in 2010, a representation of rising demand for patent information and Chinese patent value that is gaining acceptance, the commissioner said.

As China has entered the "new normal" of slower, more higher-quality deevlopment, innovation has become a primary engine to boost economic growth, he said.

In close proximity to trade, technology and legal services, patents as well as related information are valued higher, he said, adding that efficient use of patent data can help reduce research and development time by 60 percent and R&D costs by 40 percent.

As a large intellectual property filer, China is rich in patent information resources, with patent documents having surpassed 90 million.

Government data shows that SIPO received some 609,000 filings for invention patents in the first eight months, a 21.8 percent year-on-year increase.

International patent applications filed through the Patent Cooperation Treaty grew 20.4 percent to 18,700 during the same period.

The number of industrial patent applications hit 337,000 in China from January to August, up 4.6 percent from a year ago.

"All these provide us with a dynamic source for our increasingly enriched patent information reservoir," Shen said.

At the same time, SIPO maintains reciprocal relations with 38 countries, regions and international organizations to share patent documents, he added. "How to make full use of the rich reservoir to energize the mass entrepreneurship and innovation has been on our mind."

As many international organizations have lowered their expectations of global economic growth amid sluggish economy worldwide, China is advancing an innovation-driven strategy as a new engine for development, which has created "golden opportunities" for the patent information service sector, Shen said.

The commissioner encouraged service providers to offer a diversified product portfolio to meet the demand in a variety of mass entrepreneurship and innovation, whether from a growing number of upscale businesses or from grassroot-level startup companies.

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