Recently, the State Intellectual Property Office ("SIPO") has formulated and issued the Work Plan on the Dissemination and Utilization of Patent Information in China for the Year 2017 (the "Plan").
The Plan sets forth key missions in three aspects, such as "improving the capacity of innovation subjects to apply patent information and innovating and enriching ways for such capacity improvement", and also enumerates another 11 specific tasks, including "deepening the pilot construction of enterprises' capacity to use patent information" and "making further progress in effectively matching enterprises' demands in patent information with information services". In addition, the Plan lays down the objectives of and measures for each task, the responsible entities and work support for carrying out such task. With regard to efforts to deepen the selection of patent information and the pilot program of actively pushing such information, for example, the Plan requires that information selection methods and pushing manners that are based on enterprises' demands in information shall be established, in order to improve the precision to push information, and calls for developing and integrating information platforms or tools, developing various distinctive information service products according to the demand features of small and medium-sized enterprises, expanding services to cover wider areas, and exploring ways to launch the multiple cooperative supply service mode, etc.