The current situation of intellectual property rights of traditional Chinese medicine in medical vocational colleges from patent analysis

Objective The rapid spread of Chinese medicine culture in the context of "the Belt and Road Initiative" initiative, and the low value of Chinese medicine patents will not only affect the promotion and recognition of Chinese medicine in the international community, but also cause inestimable economic losses to the Chinese medicine industry in China. Higher vocational colleges of medicine, as the subject of intellectual property invention of traditional Chinese medicine, must strive to improve the quality and value of traditional Chinese medicine patents. Methods Descriptive statistical analysis was used to analyze Chinese medicine related patents applied by higher vocational colleges in China from 2000 to October 2019. Results In terms of the number of patent applications, vocational colleges and universities had accumulatively applied for 1 321 TCM patents. Judging from the contents of patent applications for Chinese medicine in higher vocational colleges, the top three were patents for Chinese herbal medicine formulations, patents for Chinese medicine production and processing equipment, and patents for traditional Chinese medicine health products. From the perspective of the type of patent applicants, various types of vocational colleges had patents for Chinese medicine. The most numerous of them were comprehensive vocational colleges, science and engineering colleges, and agricultural and forestry colleges. Medical vocational colleges ranked fourth. From the data of patent invalidation, as of 2017, the invalidation rate of TCM related patents is 41.52%, of which the invention patent invalidation rate was 28.00%. The utility model patent failure rate was 52.08%. Conclusion Medical vocational colleges have prominent problems in protecting the intellectual property rights of Chinese medicine, such as the small number of patents granted, low patent value, and high patent failure rate. We should give full play to the role of higher vocational colleges in serving local economic development, make full use of the patent information service function of college libraries, timely adjust the patent award funding policy and incentive mechanism, and vigorously promote traditional Chinese medicine on campus, start with the construction of intellectual property culture and other aspects, and take a multi-pronged approach to improve the quality and value of traditional Chinese medicine patents in medical vocational colleges.