What should I do if the medical device patent expires?

Intellectual property mainly refers to people's exclusive rights to the fruits of their intellectual activities according to law. Although China's intellectual property system was implemented late and has a history of more than 20 years, it has developed rapidly. In the past 20 years, we have formed a complete legal system of intellectual property rights that suits China's national conditions and conforms to international rules; It has also established a working system including administrative examination and approval of intellectual property rights, publicity and training, intermediary services and academic research; China has also established an administrative and judicial enforcement system for intellectual property rights. In other words, in just 20 years, an intellectual property system including legal system, working system and law enforcement system has been established in China. In actual development, China has also maintained a high speed. In recent years, China's trademark registration, utility model patents and design patents all rank first in the world. In 2005, the number of trademark applications in China was 588,000, and the number of utility model patents and design patents was 1 1 10,000 respectively. This is the first in the world, and it is far from the second. In the development of science and technology in recent years, China has its own intellectual property rights in various fields, including agriculture, manufacturing and high technology. However, at present, the construction of intellectual property system in China is still facing severe challenges. The main problems faced by China's intellectual property system are as follows: First, the road of independent innovation of intellectual property rights in China will be difficult and long. Take patents as an example. There are three kinds of patents: invention patents, utility model patents and design patents. Among them, patents with relatively high technical threshold or high gold content are invention patents, which must undergo strict examination and retrieval, and finally be authorized according to the law. First of all, in terms of quantity, the number of invention patent applications in China is 65.438+0.3 billion, ranking among the top in the world, but if we divide it by 65.438+0.3 billion people, the per capita patent ownership in China will be very small, and our ranking will be 80th and 90th. In addition, of the 6.5438+0.3 million patents, half are from foreign companies, mainly multinational companies. If they want to invest in China and enter the China market, they must first establish their own intellectual property rights, and foreign companies are very active in applying for patents; Then the remaining half of the patents come from China, about 40% of which are applied by individuals, while the patents applied by universities, research institutes, especially China enterprises are only a little over 60%. In other words, about half of the remaining 40,000 patents come from foreign-funded enterprises; The remaining 20,000 yuan was applied by state-owned enterprises and private enterprises. This more than 20,000 yuan is very small compared with the total number of our millions of enterprises. Secondly, look at quality analysis. According to statistics, over the years, the most concentrated areas for domestic people and domestic enterprises to apply for invention patents with relatively high technical content are: the first place is Chinese medicine, and domestic applications account for 98%; The second place is soft drinks, accounting for 96%; The third place is food, accounting for 90%; The fourth place is the Chinese character input method, accounting for 79%. This is a relatively concentrated field, and we have advantages. Patent applications from abroad are mainly concentrated in high-tech fields: the first is radio transmission, accounting for 93%; The second place is mobile communication, accounting for 91%; Followed by TV system, accounting for 90%; Semiconductors account for 85%; Western medicine accounts for 69%; Computer applications account for 60%. It is not difficult to see from here that the focus of foreign applications is high-tech fields and high-end. China people applied for 100 patents, of which only 18 were inventions and 82 were utility models and designs. Appearance design is the modeling of products, and utility model is some improvement and innovation of product structure. Of the 100 applications from abroad, 86 are invention patents with relatively high technical content. This is also a very sharp contrast. In China, there are also some good enterprises that attach great importance to intellectual property rights, independent innovation and the formation of their own core technologies. For example, Shenzhen Huawei Company is a private enterprise specializing in the production of communication products. Its R&D personnel account for 46% of the total number of employees, which is the largest number of invention patent applications in all domestic enterprises. More than 3,500 domestic patents, more than 400 foreign applications and more than 600 registered trademarks have been applied. In addition, Haier, Hisense, Tsingtao Brewery and so on. We have also done a good job in independent intellectual property rights and applied for many patents. For example, Haier applies for three patents every day on average, exceeding 1000 every year. Tsingtao beer is also a well-known trademark. But the number of such enterprises is too small. There are still a large number of enterprises that do not have independent innovation and have not formed their own core technologies. According to statistics, only about 3/10000 enterprises in China have core technologies with independent intellectual property rights, 99% enterprises have not applied for patents, and 60% enterprises have no own trademarks. The reason for this influence internationally is that China is only a big manufacturing country, and our intellectual property rights are still in a relatively backward state. Many people say that enterprises in China are manufacturing rather than creating, and they have property rights but no knowledge. For example, the passenger planes of our country are 100% imported from abroad. Of course, manufacturers have recently tried to use civil airliners. China's high-end medical equipment, semiconductor and integrated circuit manufacturing equipment and optical fiber manufacturing equipment are basically imported from abroad. Many important equipment and machines for producing products are imported from abroad. For example, 80% of petrochemical equipment, 70% of CNC machine tools and advanced textile equipment are imported, and more than 50% of key technologies such as color TV and mobile phone are in the hands of multinational companies, including computers, a small mouse and DVD player, and we have to pay patent fees. Intellectual property rights of technologies like these are in the hands of others. China's total foreign trade has ranked third in the world, but high-tech products with independent innovation only account for 2% of the total foreign trade. Since the Fifth Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee, it has been proposed to form a group of enterprises with independent intellectual property rights and well-known brands. This well-known brand is also very important and an important aspect of intellectual property rights. To build an innovative country, China must emphasize independent innovation, form independent intellectual property rights and form its own famous brand, which will be a long and necessary road for China enterprises. Second, in the process of intellectual property innovation, the investment in scientific research funds is insufficient. Research and experimental development activities, namely R&; D activities have a positive correlation with scientific and technological innovation activities. On the one hand, China's R & ampd expenditure shows an increasing trend. R & in China; D The total expenditure was1042.5 billion yuan in 2006,1287.6 billion yuan in 2002 and1539.6 billion yuan in 2003; Calculated at comparable prices, the three-year accumulative total is "Eighth Five-Year Plan (199 1 year to1995)" r&; D 2.3 times of the total funds, namely "Ninth Five-Year Plan (1996-2000)" R&; D 65438+ 0.3 times of the total fund. The latest statistics show that in 2002, the total fund of R & ampd was $277,654.38+0 billion. According to the exchange rate of that year, it was $654.38+02.4 billion in Japan, $50.2 billion in Germany, $32.5 billion in France, $29.3 billion in Britain, $654.38+03.8 billion in Canada and $654.38+05.56 billion in China. R&D in China; D Fund scale surpassed Italy in 200 1 year and Canada in 2002, ranking sixth in the world. On the other hand, R&; D. The total amount of funds has accounted for 40% of the world r&; D more than 80% of the total expenditure, which is higher than the share of its economic output in the total world economic output. Developed countries still maintain an absolute monopoly on the frontier knowledge of contemporary science and technology, and regard it as an important bargaining chip to maintain their international competitive advantage. R&D in China; D Although the total expenditure is in the forefront of developing countries, it is still in the r&; D's weak position in the world structure has not fundamentally changed. According to Chenery's theory of dividing economic development stages and analyzing a number of indicators (including the per capita GDP calculated by the exchange rate method of $65,438+$0,970), China's economic development has indeed entered the middle stage of industrialization. It should be pointed out that China's R&D activities have been widely concerned by the international community. D the total expenditure has ranked sixth in the world, but R&; D the input intensity is only 1.3 1%, which is lower than the average level of 1.5% in the middle stage of industrialization; The output value of China's manufacturing industry accounts for 55% of GDP, but the industrial structure is slowly adjusted from "heavy industry" to "high processing degree"; China's output of 100 industrial products ranks first in the world, but there is a huge trade deficit in international technology trade, that is, intangible technology trade closely related to intellectual property transactions. According to the countries where R& is at this stage of development; Investment intensity and technical ability, China R& investment intensity and technical ability obviously lag behind the economic development. Third, there are serious violations of intellectual property rights in China. Intellectual property infringement is a universal problem in the world. Intellectual property infringement exists in any country, even the United States, which is known as a model country for intellectual property protection, is no exception. For China, the high incidence of intellectual property disputes has come. Speaking of intellectual property disputes, of course, we will first think of intellectual property disputes between Chinese enterprises and foreign enterprises. In fact, intellectual property disputes between our own enterprises are also increasing. Take the software enterprises in China as an example. Infringement of intellectual property rights in China market has severely hit the development of software enterprises, because their main income comes from the domestic market, not from overseas or international markets. Piracy prevents software manufacturers from obtaining proper return on investment, thus preventing them from expanding their investment in software research and development, seriously weakening the competitiveness of China software enterprises and putting them at a disadvantage in the competition. Dr. Li Shuhe, the chief representative of SAP China, said in an interview with the media, "Excessive protection policies, although protecting the weak, will also turn the strong into the weak. From the perspective of software development, we should first protect intellectual property and innovation to the maximum extent, and then attract all available forces to the maximum extent, instead of simply developing software enterprises in some way. This is the real meaning of the government's policy of promoting the development of the software industry. " In fact, China has spared no effort to encourage the development of the software industry. In June 2000, "Several Policies to Encourage the Development of Software Industry and Integrated Circuit Industry" provided many supporting policies for the software industry. According to the data provided by China Software Industry Association, from the date of publication of the document to February 3, 20041day, according to the spirit of document 18, the accumulated tax refund reached1300 million yuan. But this simple supporting function is not obvious. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Information Industry, the output value of software in China in 2004 was 220 billion yuan, and the export value was only 2.8 billion dollars. /kloc-Large enterprises with more than 0/000 employees only account for 0.8% of the whole industry, and small enterprises with less than 50 employees account for 65.9% of the whole industry. In contrast, in India, there are hundreds of software companies with more than 1000 employees, and the top five software companies have more than 5,000 employees. The average number of employees in Indian software companies is 300. In 2004, India's software exports alone reached $654.38+0.2 billion. At present, domestic enterprises that make general-purpose software have basically been eliminated, and there are not many left, except a few that make Linux systems, which are still struggling to support. Therefore, the improvement of the genuine rate is very beneficial to the protection of software enterprises. Only by improving the rate of genuine products and standardizing the market can the capital accumulation of enterprises enter a virtuous circle, which is conducive to enterprises' better independent innovation. Intellectual property protection is a double-edged sword. Without effective protection, not only foreign-funded enterprises will be hurt, but domestic enterprises will also be unable to grow and develop. China's transformation from relying on resource consumption and simple processing to relying on scientific and technological innovation has largely depended on the protection of intellectual property rights. -Current situation and main problems of intellectual property system in China Zhang Yanming