Intellectual property (IP) harmonization and protection are important, particularly in rapidly evolving sectors like AI and e-commerce, according to Nazli Korkut, Secretary General of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI).
The 2024 AIPPI World Congress opened in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province on Saturday, with discussions centering around four key draft resolutions on patents, trademarks, copyrights, and rights enforcement.
This event marks the first time the event has been held in China in its 127-year history. In an interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), the group's secretary-general, Nazli Korkut, highlighted how China stands to benefit from IP protections.
"It's good to see from different perspectives, from different jurisdictions, what this IP harmonization can be, how far it can go. So for the IP community in China, the IP market in China, we all know that China is growing every year with all the industry and communication and all AI tools. It's very important that there is a big pool of talent and innovation in China. So China, just like all the other countries, has to benefit from the IP protection systems, which makes it more sensitive to IP protection in the country and across the boards," Korkut said.
Korkut also stressed the need for legal frameworks to keep pace with advancements in technologies such as e-commerce and AI, ensuring effective IP protection and fostering innovation in these areas.
"E-commerce, or AI or other technologies, from a general perspective, they advance in front of law. Law has to catch up while introducing a legal framework, a solid legal framework regarding the implementations within these areas. So this is very important for AIPPI, because AIPPI also prepares position papers in order to touch upon base some important points. This will also shape other future questions of AIPPI regarding which already has about e-commerce and it will also tackle, especially the topics regarding AI," she said.
AIPPI Secretary General stresses IP harmonization, protection
After over five years of construction, the Urumqi-Yuli Expressway that traverses the Tianshan Mountains in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region opened to traffic on Friday, cutting the time of driving from the southern to the northern parts of the towering mountains by half.
Thanks to the entry into operation of the expressway, the travel time from the regional capital of Urumqi, north of the Tianshan Mountains, to Korla, south of the Tianshan Mountains, has been shortened from seven hours to about 3.5 hours.
The Tianshan Mountains, with a length of 2,500 km, spans across the whole the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Urumqi-Yuli Expressway traversing it is 324.7-kilometer long. It includes 12 interchanges, 17 tunnels and hundreds of bridges, culverts and passages. Among them, the Tianshan Shengli Tunnel is the key project.
"With a total length of 22.13 kilometers, the Tianshan Shengli Tunnel is the world's longest expressway tunnel, and has the deepest highway shaft worldwide, creating two world records," said Song Hailiang, president of China Communications Construction Company.
The Urumqi-Yuli Expressway not only links the Urumqi metropolitan area, the northern Xinjiang urban belt, and the southern Xinjiang city cluster, but also provides convenient connectivity between the three major pilot free trade zones in Urumqi, Kashgar and Khorgos, significantly reducing logistics costs, effectively promoting mutual complementation of resource advantages between northern and southern Xinjiang, and accelerating the two-way circulation of northern Xinjiang's energy and equipment manufacturing with southern Xinjiang's agricultural products and distinctive resources.
It also connects with multiple important highways at home and abroad.
"The Urumqi-Yuli Expressway connects with New Eurasian Land Bridge, and multiple economic corridors' major arteries linking up China to Central Asia, west Asia and Pakistan. Meanwhile, it also connects with the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor. Therefore, operation of the expressway will further consolidate Xinjiang's role as a strategic hub in the 'dual circulation' of domestic and international markets," said Guo Sheng, deputy director of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region's Department of Transportation.
Expressway traversing north, south Xinjiang opens to traffic
