Intellectual Property Bank in Taiwan and China (But Very Different)

The China Post reports that the Ministry of Economic Affairs is setting up an IP bank: “The intellectual property bank is scheduled to be set up in June under the supervision of Taiwan’s semi-official Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). The bank will provide “protective shield” for Taiwan-based firms, especially those in the areas of renewable energy, green energy, mobile communications, LED, and flat panel manufacturing, by building patent portfolios and providing legal advice, the MOEA said.” Read here.

Private sector

Then an initiative from the private sector in China: Zhongtian Technology Company, set up an “IP bank” too. If I understand correctly it is a repository for patents and the patentees get some points from the bank, “the score and calculation method are linked with the contribution in principle”. “Items that can cash in rewards from the bank include new product results, new technological achievements and soft science achievements that are completed by employees or teams company resources or platforms, or with the help of research institutes, as well as various rationalization proposals.” Read here.
银行
Both pairs of characters mean “bank” (literally the first character means “silver” and the second “business”). 銀行 (yin2 xing2) is the traditional version, which they use in Taiwan and Hong Kong (only there it is pronounced as “nan4 hong4”) and  银行 (yin2 xing2) is the simplified version which they use is the People’s Republic of China and Singapore. The difference is indeed in the left character in the metal part. The numbers refer to the pronunciation: “2” means that the tone is going up. “4” means that the tone is going down.