The intellectual property service in Shaanxi province, which involves more than 50 universities and 1,100 research institutes, was further encouraged to play a more active role to promote mass innovation and entrepreneurship.

During his recent inspection tour in the province, Shen Changyu, commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office, suggested the province should "seize the good opportunity of the Silk Road Economic Belt" to speed up its development of an strong IP province.

Zhao Zhengyong, Party secretary of the provincial committee, said that the province has always focused on intellectual property work and willl further promote the work for mass innovation and entrepreneurship.

Zhao said he hopes SIPO will offer stronger support to Shaanxi's intellectual property work and make full use of the province's strengths in innovation capacity as the new starting point of the Silk Road Economic Belt.

"SIPO's support will help build an innovative province and improve the quality and efficiency of economic development," Zhao said.

In the first nine months of this year, the province's individuals and organizations filed 37,000 patent applications, an increase of 50.4 percent from the same period last year.

Nearly 30 percent of those filings were for invention patents.

In the same period of time, 25,000 patents were granted, an increase of 39 percent, including 4,721 invention patents, an increase of 30.9 percent year-on-year.

By the end of September, Shaanxi had 5.59 invention patents per 10,000 people, official statistics show.

Zhao Wei, director of the Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the institute received more than 600 patents for photoelectric technology, some of which are internationally competitive.

"We also have created mechanisms to transform new patents into production," he said.

Startup in Xian is the first hackerspace in the province, covering more than 3,000 square meters of floor area. It provides free services to young entrepreneurs to promote mass innovation and entrepreneurship, according to Chi Fang, director of the software park in Xi'an High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, where the hackerspace is located.

"We had introduced more than 30 intellectual property service agencies, accounting for 80 percent of such organizations in the province," Chi said, adding that in the first nine months of this year, more than 15,000 patent applications were filed by the companies and institutes in the high-tech zone, an increase of 31.8 percent.

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China Daily 11/04/2015 page17)