CHENGDU, July 26 (Xinhua) - Pan-Pearl River Delta held first property right forum here on Teusday, voicing concerns for lack of innovation and intellectual property protection to drive the region’s economic growth.

    Heads of intellectual property authorities from Hong Kong, Macao and mainland PPRD provinces considered innovations and patents critical to the sustainability of the PPRD region’s fast economic growth, echoing the voice of a senior scholar at the high-ranking officials’ session of the PPRD Cooperation and Development Forum the previous day.

    One of the long-term goals of PPRD Cooperation is to transform the region’s economy into knowledge economy, said Tang Jun, a researcher at the Intellectual Property Institute of Guangdong Finance Academy.

    In PPRD, where there is a better protection of property right, there is a better economy; and vice versa, observed Zhang Qin, vice commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office.

    Statistics show the PPRD region submitted over five hundred thousand patent applications with more than three hundred approved between 1985 and 2004. The year 2004 saw more than eighty thousand applications with fifty thousand patented, respectively posing growths of 15.7% and 4% over 2003, both higher than the national average.

    Mainland provinces of Pan-Pearl River Delta, the largest regional cooperation in China comprising eight provinces, one autonomous region and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao signed an agreement on intellectual property protection last year.

    Some PPRD provinces recently started publishing intellectual property white papers on a regular basis. Enditem