(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-11-16 15:28

China launched its first ever "Patent Week" on Friday to promote patent protection, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) said.

Trade fairs, exhibitions and lectures will take place in Beijing and about 20 other provinces and municipalities including Tianjin, Shanghai and Jilin, over the next five days.

The China Beijing Equity Exchange, located in the capital's Financial Street, will host the main trade fair and lectures and exhibitions on intellectual property rights protection will be held in universities.

Zhang Qin, deputy director of the SIPO, said "We will provide legal and technical consultations to medium and small companies and individual patent owners or new technology inventors."

He said the "Patent Week" would become an annual event.

In 2006, the SIPO accepted 573,000 patent applications, up 20.3 percent year-on-year, of which around 210,000 were patent applications for new inventions, SIPO statistics show.