Day: October 4, 2024

The Ministry of Urban and Rural Development on Thursday inaugurated the Oniipa Town Council office building constructed at a cost of N . dollars 19 million . Speaking at the inauguration ceremony , Urban and Rural Development Minister Erastus Uutoni said town councils are responding to the developmental needs of their people . The new office building , he said , will bring development and service delivery closer to the people while serving the inhabitants of Oniipa town . He encouraged community members to play their part and pay for the services rendered . ‘ I am informed that some community members do not want to pay their bills , so let us work together to upgrade Oniipa ,’ the minister said . He further urged the community to safeguard the infrastructure whilst enjoying the benefits that come with it . ‘ Let us all hold hands in the spirit of Harambee and shun the evil of vandalism to safeguard this building as it forms part of the establishment of the future development and prosperity of the settlement
and its people ,’ Uutoni said . Oniipa constituency councillor , Vilho Nuunyango called upon members of the business community to work together in developing the town . ‘ I call upon all stakeholders , council members , traditional authorities , business leaders and community members to work together in unity to bring about development and create opportunities at the town ,’ said Nuunyango .

Source: The Namibia News Agency

Tokyo stocks closed higher on Friday as surging oil prices boosted energy-related issues, but gains were limited amid caution before the release of U.S. employment data later in the day.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei stock index, the 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average, ended up 83.56 points, or 0.22 percent, from Thursday at 38,635.62.

The broader Topix index, meanwhile, finished 10.36 points, or 0.39 percent, higher at 2,694.07.

On the stock market, gains were led by mining, and oil and coal product issues, as crude oil futures rose sharply on concerns over stable supply amid increasing tensions in the Middle East, analysts said.

But advances were limited with investors refraining from chasing the upside as they awaited U.S. jobs data to gauge the health of the U.S. economy and the Federal Reserve’s likely next moves, they added.

Source: The Namibia News Agency

Hong Kong stock market rallied on Friday with the benchmark Hang Seng Index up 2.82 percent to close at 22,736.87 points, the highest in two and a half years.

The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index hiked 3.06 percent to end at 8,156.5 points, and the Hang Seng Tech Index surged 4.99 percent to close at 5,227.13 points.

Source: The Namibia News Agency

Henok Amanuel Emiru, a 25-year-old Ethiopian, never anticipated that his first foray into international skills competition would culminate in him securing the top accolade in Africa.

In a grueling test that lasted over 11 hours, Emiru adeptly switched between tasks, meticulously cutting pipes according to blueprints and nimbly maneuvering up and down a ladder — all while quickly shuttling between circuits and computers.

When the results were finally announced, his instructor, Jiang Jiang, the Chinese head of the Ethiopian Luban Workshop, leapt to his feet in the audience and exclaimed: “Excellent! The young man has truly excelled.”

This year, Emiru, now a teacher at a vocational school in Ethiopia, participated at the Belt and Road International Skills Competition hosted in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality in late June.

Prior to the event, he was trained by Jiang at the Luban Workshop in Ethiopia, where he delved into novel vocational skills standards and familiarized himself with advanced intel
ligent machinery. He also accompanied Jiang to Tianjin University of Technology and Education (TUTE) in the north of China for final warm-up training.

“Having learned about smart home installation equipment, I no longer felt like a stranger to the tools, modules and operational demands of the competition. This provided me with immense assistance and confidence,” Emiru said.

Jiang believes that the Luban Workshop serves not only as a platform for Sino-Ethiopian collaboration, but also as a cradle for nurturing vocational and technical talents for Ethiopia.

Jiang, who serves as the Chinese liaison officer for the Ethiopian Luban Workshop, has dedicated over a decade to his overseas role. Through his efforts, the Luban Workshop has helped cultivate many high-level vocational education teachers for East African countries. In Ethiopia alone, more than 1,500 local students mentored by Jiang are now spread across various vocational colleges.

“The Luban Workshop is a paradigm of international vocational education
cooperation that bolsters the overall diplomatic landscape, supports the Belt and Road Initiative, and deepens cultural exchanges,” said Li Li, director of the vocational education department of the Tianjin Municipal Education Commission.

Over the past decade, the international outreach of Chinese vocational education has primarily focused on providing hardware and teaching equipment — as well as deploying teachers abroad.

Today, leveraging the Luban Workshop, TUTE is sharing China’s globally-oriented and locally-adapted Engineering Practice and Innovation Project (EPIP) teaching model with educators worldwide, while also establishing localized operational teams, and has garnered international recognition, according to TUTE.

Since the inception of the Ethiopian Luban Workshop in 2021, it has nurtured many high-tech talents in fields such as industrial robots, industrial control and sensors.

Previously, Ethiopia had suffered from a significant lack of vocational and technical education and training in the
se fields. Thankfully, the robot education system established by the Luban Workshop in collaboration with local entities has filled this gap, according to Jiang.

“From Ethiopia to Tianjin and then to Chongqing, Emiru has acquired new skills, made new friends and set a goal to learn Chinese and further his studies in China,” Jiang said, adding that although the skills competition has concluded, the era of “skills cooperation and mutual development” has only just begun for international vocational education.

“Once, a senior Ethiopian official stated at the Vocational Education Development Conference in Tianjin that while African vocational education had lagged behind the rest of the world, their determination to catch up was formidable,” Jiang said. “With us and the Luban Workshop, they will definitely catch up!”

Source: The Namibia News Agency

At least 10 people were killed and three others injured Friday after a goods truck hit a tractor trolley from behind in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, police said.

The accident took place early Friday on G T Road in Mirzapur district, about 345 km southeast of Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh.

“A tractor trolley carrying 13 laborers who were returning from construction work in Bhadohi district, was hit from behind by a goods truck that had gone out of the driver’s control,” a senior police official Abhinandan said. “Out of the 13 people in the tractor trolley, 10 died on the spot while the three others were taken to the hospital.”

According to police, the victims were residents of the Mirzamurad area.

Police have registered a case and ordered an investigation to ascertain the cause of the crash.

Source: The Namibia News Agency

The evolution of intellectual property (IP) in China provides valuable insights into the country’s 75-year journey of innovation.

Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, IP initiatives have been vital in protecting individual inventions, fostering enterprise competitiveness, and driving scientific advancement and economic growth.

RECOGNITION OF KNOWLEDGE

Thirty-nine years ago, when Hu Guohua applied for an invention patent, he had to queue overnight outside a national office of patents. The following day, April 1, 1985, marked the enactment of China’s Patent Law, leading to over 3,400 applications from both domestic and international sources, setting a daily record in patent history at that time.

Eight months later, Hu received a patent certificate for his invention, a color display device to help analyze satellite images. Newspapers splashed photos of the spectacled aerospace engineer, who became China’s first patent rights holder.

The inventor, now 83, continues his relentle
ss pursuit of innovation. According to a report in China Intellectual Property News, last week an astronomical observatory installed a patented solar simulator luminescent device he invented.

“The patent system has recognized the value of knowledge, thereby stimulating innovation,” Hu said.

In the 1960s, most Chinese people were unaware of IP. Through recommendation letters, sci-tech researchers could gain access to each other’s inventions. While such practices helped popularize technologies, they failed to protect individual work and ideas adequately, ultimately hindering long-term innovation, Hu noted.

Since the 1980s, China has implemented a series of laws relating to intellectual property, including Trademark Law, Patent Law and Copyright Law. These laws have undergone constant revisions based on practical experience to ensure stronger legislative protection. Particularly noteworthy is the newly enacted Civil Code, which has established a punitive damage system for infringement that is considered to be
of high standard internationally.

The central government has also put IP protection high on its agenda, carrying out a series of measures to enhance efficiency and combat improper behavior.

Hu’s first patent certificate is now part of the National Museum of China’s collection since the patent has expired. Today, patent certificates are far more common in China.

By the end of 2023, China became the first country in the world with more than 4 million valid invention patents.

From only 98 patent applications filed through the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 1994 to 59,000 in 2019, China also rose as the leading global source of international patent applications and has stayed at the top ever since.

PROTECTION FOR ENTERPRISES

Enterprises are the main contributors to China’s position as the world’s largest patent filer. While cost-effectiveness was once their primary competitive advantage for market penetration, the growing trend of international expansion has prompted a shift toward IP co
mpetitiveness. They now acknowledge that prioritizing innovation is essential for achieving sustainable development.

Goodbaby serves as a prime example. In 2014, the Chinese child products company filed a design patent application for a stroller that revolutionized the industry. The product, made from lightweight aerospace-grade aluminum alloy, weighs only 4.6 kilograms and has been acclaimed as the “pocket stroller” since its launch as it can fit easily into a backpack. In the same year, the company entered the global market through international mergers and acquisitions.

However, the product faced intense patent infringement upon entering the market. The company successfully defended its rights and won lawsuits at home and abroad. Currently, the core patents for this China-designed stroller have been authorized in over 30 countries.

“Having our own brand gives us control over development destiny, and strong IP protection ensures a solid guarantee,” said the company’s IP officer Tu Zuhong.

Nihat Deniz Ba
yramoglu, at Bayramoglu Law Offices LLC based in Las Vegas, the United States, has been providing IP consultation services in China since the 2010s. The company helps Chinese clients file around 3,000 patent and trademark applications each year. He found that Chinese enterprises are increasingly recognizing the importance of IP protection.

“In the past, only large Chinese multinationals were interested in applying for IP rights abroad, and now much smaller Chinese companies are also trying to protect IP rights,” the attorney told Xinhua at the 13th China Intellectual Property Annual Conference held in Beijing in September.

“In the past, many of the Chinese companies I represented were only defendants in court cases, and now many of my Chinese clients are plaintiffs in the United States suing American companies for patent infringement,” he said.

He added that the perception in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s that China was involved in producing counterfeit products and did not respect IP rights
will gradually be replaced by the reality that “Chinese companies are now at the forefront of cutting-edge technological innovation.”

As China accelerates its global expansion, the world has increasingly engaged with the Chinese market.

China is committed to providing equal IP protection for both domestic and foreign enterprises. More than 5,000 foreign and joint venture companies have been registered in the country’s state-level IP protection centers, and over the past decade, China’s IP regulators have resolved several IP disputes involving companies from countries like the United States, Germany and France.

According to the China National Intellectual Property Administration, by the end of June, the number of valid foreign invention patents and registered trademarks in China showed year-on-year increases of 3.9 percent and 3.8 percent, respectively, demonstrating the strong commitment of foreign enterprises to the Chinese market and their confidence in China’s IP protection work.

CONTRIBUTION TO MODERN
IZATION

According to the WIPO’s Global Innovation Index 2024, which serves as a critical benchmark for global innovation trends, China has climbed to 11th place in the ranking of the world’s most innovative economies.

The WIPO director general, Daren Tang, attributed China’s progress to its focus on research and development and scientific innovation.

China’s IP now extends to almost every field of cutting-edge innovation, from supercomputers to artificial intelligence. An exemplary achievement in this regard is China’s role in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a large scientific project that aims to replicate the sun’s fusion process to produce clean energy. In April 2021, ITER reached a milestone with the installation of its first large superconducting coil.

At the heart of this technological breakthrough lies a Chinese patent invention about the manufacturing of superconducting magnets for nuclear fusion. Song Yuntao, one of the patent holders and the director-general of the I
nstitute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the patent “demonstrates the contribution of Chinese wisdom to advancing humanity’s quest for fusion energy.”

IP has not only boosted sci-tech advancements but also propelled economic growth.

With an average annual growth rate of 12.4 percent since 2021, the added value of China’s patent-intensive industries reached 15.32 trillion yuan (about 2.19 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2022, contributing 12.7 percent to the GDP of the world’s second-largest economy.

In the digital economy sector, in particular, 406,000 invention patents were authorized in core industries last year, representing 45 percent of the country’s total. Over the past five years, this sector has seen an average annual growth rate of 21 percent.

Starting from humble beginnings, China has emerged as the world’s largest patent filer and is advancing toward becoming an IP powerhouse. The government has pledged to continue leveraging intellectual property to boost innovation and sup
port Chinese modernization.

Source: The Namibia News Agency