Science academy sells its patents by auction

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) put 36 of its patents up for auction on Friday in Ji'nan, Shandong Province. Within three hours, 28 patents had been sold at a total price of 5.03 million yuan (794,600 US dollars).

The auction of 36 patents owned by Chinese Academy of Sciences was held on March 16, 2018, in Ji'nan, Shandong Province. [Photo: qilu.com]

This was the first nationwide auction held by CAS to sell their patents. The CAS plans to hold further auctions in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shanghai, and Guangdong.

The Shandong Science and Technology Bureau will follow what happens to each patent. Bid winners can receive as much as five million yuan of support funding based on their performance in transforming the patent into real-world products and services, said Liu Weimin, the director general of the bureau.

The 36 patents that were included in the first auction were the most viewed among all the 932 items displayed online. They are the product of the work of 57 institutes affiliated with the CAS, and cover fields including new materials, information technology, intelligent manufacturing, and the healthcare industry.

Bidding at auction is one of the major ways for enterprises to acquire patents. Auction is an efficient way to generate productivity through transferring the results of scientific research, said Sui Xueqing, one of the heads of the CAS.