On 19 April, the 2024 Yangtze River Delta Intellectual Property Integration Theme Event was held in Jiashan County, Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province. During the event, Tang Heng, Secretary of the Immediate Party Branch of the Intellectual Property Institute of Jiangsu University and Executive Director of the Institute of Intellectual Property for New Structural Economics, released the 2024 Report on Intellectual Property Development of Key Cities in the Yangtze River Delta Region (hereinafter referred to as the Report), in which Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing, and Ningbo ranked among the top five in terms of comprehensive strength of intellectual property development.The Report further deepens the monitoring and evaluation of the synergistic development of intellectual property rights in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region, promotes the development of intellectual property rights in the YRD region from a higher starting point, and advances the integrated development of the YRD.

The Report pointed out that the three provinces and one city in the Yangtze River Delta gave full play to the important role of intellectual property rights in stimulating innovation internally and promoting openness externally, and created an integrated development of intellectual property rights in terms of joint consultation on intellectual property rights development, joint progress in the layout, joint governance of protection, joint sharing of services and joint construction of the environment, and the standard difference in the index of comprehensive strength of intellectual property rights development of the three provinces and one city narrowed by 5 per cent compared with that of the last annual report, so that the coordinated development of the region has achieved obvious results, and the coordinated nature of regional development, The coordination and balance of regional development have been continuously enhanced. In terms of the comprehensive development strength of intellectual property in provincial areas, the Yangtze River Delta region is in a leading position in the country, Shanghai is leading the development, Jiangsu Province has obvious advantages in intellectual property services and talents, Zhejiang Province has obvious advantages in intellectual property application, and Anhui Province has been narrowing the gap in terms of intellectual property creation and management. In terms of the comprehensive development strength of IPR in key cities, there is little change in the overall ranking of the 27 key cities in terms of comprehensive strength from the ranking of the previous annual report, among which Taizhou City, Ningbo City and Nantong City have improved their rankings by more than two places, which is a more outstanding performance.

The Report suggests that the integrated development of intellectual property in the Yangtze River Delta should be promoted in depth, the transformation and application of patents should be strengthened to promote the development of new productive forces, the specialised and applied intellectual property talent training system should be improved, and intellectual property rights should be empowered to build a modernised industrial system in accordance with local conditions to help the integrated development of intellectual property in the Yangtze River Delta region.