90% of Chinese patents for pharmaceuticals were seized by foreign companies

The author was informed at the just-concluded "Tianjin Pharmaceutical Industrial Development and Intellectual Property Strategy Forum" that because of lack of awareness of intellectual property protection, a large number of patents for the production of traditional Chinese medicines have been owned by foreign countries, and the loss of intellectual property rights in Chinese medicine has been serious.
It is understood that 90% of China's patent applications for Chinese medicine are from foreign companies, while the number and ownership of international patent applications for Chinese enterprises of Chinese medicine are only double digits. Chen Kaixian, president of the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, told the author that the only artemisinin in the country that was listed as the basic medicine list of the World Health Organization, because it had not applied for intellectual property protection, its principle and chemical structure were copied by foreign pharmaceutical companies and became their cash cows. With a market share of about US$1.5 billion, Chinese companies only account for less than 1%