The cooperation between China and Europe in the intellectual property sphere has contributed to the innovation and progress of the global IP system, a senior official said on Thursday.

Shen Changyu, commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office, made the remarks at a symposium on the 30th anniversary of Europe-China cooperation. He said the European Patent Office is "a trustworthy, long-standing strategic partner", and the two offices have enjoyed "fruitful cooperation" over the past three decades.

The multifaceted exchanges have ranged from policy and legislation consultation through staff training, patent examination and information sharing, Shen said.

Since the EPO offered a helping hand at the beginning of China's modern IP system - which enabled the country to start at a high level - the European office has played a key part in milestone events in Chinese IP history, he said.

SIPO and EPO established bilateral cooperation in 1985, the same year that China's first patent law came into effect. The relationship increased to a strategic partnership in 2007.

Shen said his team calls for construction of public service platforms for trade and information to promote patent industrialization and information and help analyze the market, make sound major research decisions and serve mass innovation and entrepreneurship campaigns in the country.

IP protection is key to providing a primary guarantee for innovation, he said, noting that the Chinese government has made it clear it will implement strict IP protection for an open, fair and transparent legal and market environment.

In 2014, three IP-dedicated courts opened in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and administrators investigated nearly 24,480 patent disputes nationwide.

EPO President Benoit Battistelli said at the meeting that the two offices' long-term vision and China's choice of best tools, applications and practices are the two pillars of the bilateral partnership.

"Some common practices in the world IP pattern were directly generated by the cooperation between EPO and SIPO," he said, citing the Global Dossier as an example.

The two offices were the first among the five largest IP offices in Europe, China, the United States, Japan and South Korea to use the online service, which offers integrated access to public files available at the designated countries and regions, free of charge and with automatic machine translation.

"This strategic cooperation between SIPO and EPO has not only transformed the IP system in China and Europe, but also greatly contributed to transforming the global patent system," Battistelli said.

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