In 2009, Hubei made pleasing achievements in intellectual property (IPR) work, with 27,206 patent applications for the whole year, increased by 28.65% and ranking the 8th in China.

The province has also made new breakthroughs in patent work for enterprises, with 13,999 patent applied by enterprises in 2009, which is for the first time to reach half of the total applications, up to 51.46%, and ranks the second following Shanghai.

In order to boost the IPR registration for enterprises' independent innovation achievements, Hubei Province carried out the project of "No Zero Patent Anymore" among enterprises, chose key industry cluster and 509 Zero-patent enterprises in all developing zones as the trial places, and encourage enterprises to apply patents for their own technologies with fine effects. According to the statistics, the trial enterprises applied 1,297 patent applications.

It is learnt that, Hubei Province also actively strived for the support from State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO). In 2009, four cites were included in the project of "5.26" national IPR protection, accounting for 10% nationally; Wufeng County and Huangmei County were specified as the first batch of IPR protection trial counties for traditional knowledge, one sixth nationally; and Zhijiang city and other 5 counties were specified as the first batch to implement the national IPR-driving project.
                                                                                                      Source:IPR in China