On the morning of March 9, Wang Dahe, deputy director of Xiamen Municipal Intellectual Property Office, said via the mayor’s hotline that in order to assist and encourage patent pledge, the Office planned to establish a special fund for patent pledge to further support enterprises.

Wang said that patent rights were intangible assets. While the situation, where the rights could be recognized and converted into funds, just happened in recent one or two years in Xiamen. In 2009, during the "Two Sessions" in Xiamen，the Municipal Committee of Jiu San Society submitted a proposal on exploring the financing model of intellectual property rights for small and medium sized enterprises in the city and suggested implementing a patent pledge loan. In April 2009, the Intellectual Property Office of Xiamen started to investigate the feasibility of the model and launched guided opinions in September 2009.

Loan services for patent pledge just made a good start, and so far, only four banks had the business, including Bank of Communications, China Merchants Bank, Citic Industrial Bank and the rural commercial bank, who provided a line of credit close to 200 million yuan to 6 small and medium sized enterprises. Wang said that numerous enterprises did not know that patent rights could be pledged in banks. He expected to let more and more enterprises know about this business via various media. This year, the standing committee in Xiamen will amend the regulations on patent protection, and put it into the seven legislative plans.

Wang pointed out that the purpose for the special fund was to subsidize the evaluation charges and the loan interest of the patent pledge. He hoped that governments could use patent pledge funds as a measure to assist small and medium sized enterprises.

Source:IPR in China