Recently, Guangzhou market supervision and Administration Bureau released the intellectual property operation data in 2021. The total amount of patent and trademark pledge financing in the city reached 11.464 billion yuan, benefiting more than 600 small, medium and micro enterprises in total. The “Shenzhen 2020 intellectual property white paper” released in September last year also disclosed that the amount of patent pledge in Shenzhen in 2020 was 9.671 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2 times, which fully shows that intellectual property has played an important supporting role in the development of inclusive financial services. Intellectual property rights, also known as “intellectual property rights”, refer to “the property rights enjoyed by the obligee for the achievements created by his intellectual labor”, which are generally valid only for a limited time. The intellectual property rights, such as the intellectual property rights owned or created by a person, an intellectual design or an organization, are considered to be all kinds of intellectual property rights in a literary work, an intellectual design or an image. According to Professor Mark Lemley of Stanford University, the term “intellectual property” was widely used after the establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization in 1967. Taking Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong as the leading representatives, Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Dawan district is accelerating the construction of a full chain intellectual property financial service system, “intangible intellectual property” is becoming “tangible assets”, which not only injects financial living water into the development of enterprises in the region, but also promotes the accurate docking and two-way integration of innovation chain and industrial chain, so as to create a more comprehensive technological innovation system. The main concerns are as follows:
First, intellectual property rights are an important breakthrough in China’s inclusive financial policy reform. The guarantee law of the people’s Republic of China promulgated and implemented in 1995 expressly stipulates that the property rights in trademark exclusive right, patent right and copyright can be used for right pledge, which provides a legal guarantee for the development of intellectual property pledge financing system. Since 2006, the central government has issued a large number of regulations on pledge of intellectual property rights and registration of intellectual property rights, and improved the supporting policies for the registration of intellectual property rights, including pledge of intellectual property rights and registration of intellectual property rights. In 2013, the Former Banking Regulatory Bureau issued the guidance on intellectual property pledge loan business of commercial banks (YJF [2013] No. 6 document), guiding and regulating commercial banks to carry out intellectual property pledge loan business, making full use of the financing guarantee value of intellectual property and supporting enterprise innovation. In 2019, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, together with the intellectual property office and the Copyright Bureau, issued the notice on Further Strengthening the financing of intellectual property pledge (Yin Bao Jian Fa [2019] No. 34). The highlights and significance of the policy are reflected in four aspects: establishing a special financing service system, encouraging the innovation of financing products, improving the risk management mechanism, comprehensive guarantee and solving difficult problems. In 2020, the general office of the State Council issued the implementation opinions on enhancing the driving role of mass entrepreneurship and innovation demonstration bases and further promoting the strong driving force of reform and stabilizing employment (GBF [2020] No. 26), which proposed to establish intellectual property pledge financing risk compensation fund in conditional regional demonstration bases to compensate for unsecured assets, no cash flow Risk compensation shall be implemented for intellectual property pledge financing of start-ups without orders. In 2020, the State Intellectual Property Office issued a series of specific measures to facilitate the handling of intellectual property business, relax the deadline and restore rights, promote pledge financing, patent information service, service window management and so on. In terms of supporting enterprises to carry out intellectual property pledge financing, the State Intellectual Property Office has also established a green channel for pledge registration, organized local governments to carry out the arrangement of pledge demand and stock projects, and strengthened the integration of policies and work innovation. In addition to the central policies, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other cities have also introduced support policies on intellectual property rights in combination with regional industrial characteristics, including risk compensation, loan discount and so on. From the evolution of historical policies, it is not difficult to see that China, whether the central department or local government, attaches great importance to intellectual property to promote the development of Inclusive Finance, allows a higher tolerance for the non-performing rate of intellectual property pledge loans, and is not used as a deduction factor for the regulatory rating of regulatory authorities and the internal assessment and evaluation of banks. Therefore, it can also be expected that intellectual property rights will play a more important role in the overall situation of China’s 14th five year plan.
Second, Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Bay area will become the world’s leading intellectual property and technological innovation demonstration area. The outline of the development plan of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay area puts forward clear objectives for scientific and technological innovation. It is necessary to deeply implement the innovation driven development strategy and strive to improve the transformation capacity of scientific and technological achievements. At the same time, it also puts forward relevant requirements for promoting the construction of scientific and technological innovation corridor in the bay area. Invention patents are an important indicator to measure the innovation ability of a country or region. According to the report of GDI think tank, the disclosure of invention patents in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay area from 2016 to 2020 reached 1.4984 million, far exceeding the other three Bay areas, with a compound annual growth rate of 17.23%. In recent years, the market players in the Great Bay area are still active in innovation, and new patents are in a leading position in the world. In 2020, the disclosure of invention patents in the Great Bay area was about 365900, 2.39 times that of the Tokyo Bay area, 5.73 times that of the San Francisco Bay area and 7.85 times that of the New York Bay area. In 2020, the number of PCT international patent applications in 9 cities in China was 28000, accounting for 39% of the country, and the number of effective trademark registrations was 4.555 million, accounting for 15% of the country. In 2021, the R & D expenditure of 9 cities in Dawan District exceeded 360 billion yuan, the number of national high-tech enterprises reached 57000, and PCT patents of 9 enterprises in Guangdong such as Huawei were shortlisted as the top 50 global enterprises. In the field of intellectual property, Hong Kong and Macao have advanced innovation and innovation Shanghai New Culture Media Group Co.Ltd(300336) foundation, and intellectual property protection is good. Shenzhen and Guangzhou have high-quality high-tech manufacturing bases and rich intellectual property reserves. They are also the main positions of innovation institutions of universities and scientific research institutes in Dawan district. The intellectual property cooperation between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao is deepening. By 2020, 239 Guangdong Hong Kong cooperation projects and 43 Guangdong Macao cooperation projects have been carried out. The global innovation index released by the World Intellectual Property Organization shows that the “Shenzhen Hong Kong Guangzhou” innovation cluster ranks second in the world for two consecutive years. Looking forward to the future, the three places in the bay area will carry out closer exchanges and cooperation at the level of intellectual property, jointly create an environmental atmosphere of respecting intellectual property, and build a world-class intellectual property protection and trading system, so that large, medium and small enterprises can use the power of intellectual property to continuously empower the economic growth of the bay area.
Third, intellectual property rights have opened up a new blue ocean for the scientific and innovative financial market of commercial banks. In recent years, Bank Of China Limited(601988) has actively tested the intellectual property pledge business and developed a variety of new products and services. First, financing is provided in the form of a combination of multiple pledges. Because the bank does not know whether the pledged intellectual property belongs to the core intellectual property of the enterprise and whether it is the result of a large amount of investment by the enterprise, the loan is not limited to a single kind of intellectual property pledge, but a combination of patents, copyrights, trademarks and other collateral to enhance the default cost of the loan enterprise and reduce the risk of information asymmetry. Second, choose the multi-party cooperative financing mode of bank, government and bank. Banks provide financing, regional governments provide subsidies, third-party guarantee companies (or insurance institutions or risk compensation funds) provide guarantee for borrowers, and enterprises provide counter guarantee for guarantee companies with intellectual property as pledge. This financing mode can reduce the concentration risk and improve the success rate and efficiency of credit granting. Third, design investment and loan linkage solutions. For technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises with good technological prospects and large development space, banks use intellectual property pledge as a supplement to increase the cost of breach of contract, restrict the moral hazard of enterprises through the signing of equity investment agreement, share entrepreneurial risks with enterprises and share the benefits of listing in the future.
Fourth, asset securitization product model. Taking Shenzhen Stock Exchange as an example, ABS products are issued with small loan claims as basic assets and intellectual property rights as pledge, which packages the claims of multiple enterprises into the pool, increases the dispersion of debtors and reduces the financing cost of enterprises. By the end of 2020, Dawan district has approved a total of 16 intellectual property securitization products, with an issued product scale of 2.67 billion yuan. In addition, we can also learn from the intellectual property financing mode of foreign developed countries. In the United States, Silicon Valley Bank adopts the mode of follow-up investment to provide intellectual property pledge financing services for various newly established scientific and technological small and medium-sized enterprises. The object is the enterprises that have provided financing by venture capital. If the enterprise cannot repay the loan, the intellectual property belongs to the bank. There is also an intellectual property financing mode in the United States to ensure the acquisition price of assets. American m-cam (patent consulting company) provides credit guarantee for enterprises, but does not directly provide loan services. When enterprises cannot repay the loan, m-cam company can purchase the intellectual property of loan enterprises according to the acquisition price in the contract. In Germany, the risk sharing model is mainly adopted to share the loan risk between the federal government and the state government, in which the federal government bears 39% of the loan risk, the state government bears 26% of the loan risk, commercial banks bear 7% of the loan risk, and guarantee institutions bear 28% of the guarantee risk. In Japan, science and technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises mainly obtain loans by pledging intellectual property rights to policy investment banks, which mainly provide preferential loans for infrastructure, enterprises in underdeveloped areas and scientific research projects supported by the state.
