The City of Shenzhen has been central to China’s emergence as a global technology leader. Located on the Southern tip of Central China, Shenzhen was dedicated as a Special Economic Zone in 1979, and quickly grew from a small fishing village into a city of 12 million people. Shenzhen’s growth was fueled by manufacturing, but is being propelled forward by innovation. For years, the “electronics capital of the world,” Shenzhen makes 90% of the world’s electronics, including many products that were designed in the Silicon Valley. More recently, Shenzhen has become an innovation center in its own right, spending an impressive 4% of its GDP on research and development. Shenzhen’s emergence as a technology leader has been accompanied by dramatic increases in patent filings and IP litigation. In early 2020, China surpassed the United States as the largest filer of international patent applications, with nearly half of those applications coming from Shenzhen inventors. Shenzhen also has dedicated itself to making itself an international IP protection center. Shenzhen’s IP protection infrastructure includes a specialized Shenzhen IP court, the Shenzhen Intellectual Property Protection Center, the South China High-Tech IP arbitration center, two IP forensic institutions, and top intellectual property service providers and law firms.
Understanding the ongoing economic development of Shenzhen and the surrounding Great Bay Area, and the corresponding growth in IP and IP protection systems, is of critical importance to an ever-expanding list of industries. Here are some key considerations:
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