Sixty-eight local university students were honored over the weekend for receiving patents on their work, as the city pushes to educate graduate students about the importance of intellectual property rights.

"Our main purpose is to raise university students' awareness of the need to protect the intellectual property of their academic achievements," said Chen Zhixing of the Shanghai Intellectual Property Bureau.

Chen says an increasing number of students around China have seen their research stolen in recent years by companies or their professors.

"That is extremely unfair for students," Chen stressed.

To combat the problems, the bureau, along with the Shanghai Education Commission, issued a regulation in September calling for cash rewards to be paid to students who have their work patented.

The two organizations will award 3,000 yuan (US$361) for each patent, with 60 percent of the money going to the student and the rest going to their school.

Special funds will also be set up at local colleges to award students who have their work patented.

Currently, universities hold the rights to any research or invention created by students using school funds or equipment.

But Chen says that will soon change.

"Actually, the rule is just a trial for college IPR protection. In the long term, the ownership (of research) will belong to the students themselves," said Chen.

The regulation also calls on schools to add courses on intellectual property rights every semester.

"The regulation can really protect my achievements from being pirated for commercial purposes and make me learn a lot about intellectual property, which I had no idea about before," said Xu Jiaqiang, a graduate student in physics at Shanghai University.

Xu was one of the students honored over the weekend.

Shanghai's 48,900 graduate students, studying at 56 local universities, generate some 20,000 academic papers each year. But they only apply for 500 patents a year, a number officials say is far too low.

Chen says it's important to teach students about intellectual property as the issue has caused some concerns from overseas over the last few years and the young generation should develop a keen sense of the issue.

(Shanghai Daily November 3, 2003)