Patent Applications and Sample Testing

Gao Yuan drove to a commercial office building in the city center, where there was a Patent Agency Company called Qian Feng.

"Sir, who are you here to see?" The young woman handling reception at the entrance rose smoothly, wearing a smile that was not especially warm but highly professional.

"I'm here to see Mr. Song Kun. I spoke with him on the phone yesterday afternoon," Gao Yuan said.

Before long, a refined-looking man around twenty-seven or twenty-eight emerged, dressed in a suit and wearing gold-rimmed glasses.

Perhaps not expecting Gao Yuan to be so young, Song Kun paused slightly before saying with a polite smile, "You must be Mr. Gao Yuan?"

"That's me."

"A pleasure, a pleasure. We've finally met. Please, follow me."

The two exchanged pleasantries as they entered the company.

Every Patent Agent here had their own cubicle. Song Kun invited Gao Yuan to sit down, then began clearing away the mountain-like pile of documents on his desk.

"Please excuse the mess, Mr. Gao. Documentation is actually the most important part of a Patent Agent's work. No matter what kind of patent a client applies for, the application must comply with internationally accepted rules and be written clearly and plainly."

As Song Kun explained, Gao Yuan nodded slightly. Before coming, he had looked up some relevant information online and knew that Patent Agents were experts at drafting documents and drawing technical diagrams.

"By the way, how did you find our company, Mr. Gao?" Song Kun asked as he tidied his desk, seemingly joking. "Our Baidu search ranking isn't very high since we haven't paid for it. Were you referred by an acquaintance?"

Pfft—

At the mention of Baidu search, Gao Yuan nearly burst out laughing.

"What normal person would trust Baidu?" Gao Yuan said with a smile. "It was simple. First, I logged onto the National Intellectual Property Administration website, found Patent Agency Management, then opened the Patent Agency System and searched for local Patent Agency Companies. That gave me the number of agents at each company and their founding dates. By looking at how long a company has been operating and its staff numbers, I could judge its strength."

"Second, I used the SooPAT patent search engine and entered the name of the Patent Agency Company. That let me see the contents of cases that had been approved, giving me a second important metric: patent approval rate. Compared to the number of applications, the approval rate is the most important indicator of whether a team is truly professional."

"After combining all that information, I found that while your company isn't the largest, your patent approval rate ranks first, far ahead of your industry peers. That shows you are a highly professional, conscientious, and rapidly growing company."

Gao Yuan spoke with a smile and an even tone.

Song Kun had never expected that the young man before him, dressed in a sporty T-shirt and shorts, would possess such meticulous thinking and such clear logic.

"May I ask, Mr. Gao, have you studied law?" Song Kun asked curiously.

Without realizing it, his attitude toward Gao Yuan had already changed dramatically, gaining a measure of respect.

Gao Yuan smiled. "I studied computer science in college. I don't know anything about law."

Everything went very smoothly. Gao Yuan had long since thought through his needs, listing out the scope of the patents and the trademark designs one by one. Song Kun only needed to provide professional advice and services according to Gao Yuan's requirements.

"I have to say, working with Mr. Gao has been extremely pleasant. If every client were like you, my job would be so much easier." Once their discussion was complete, Song Kun shook Gao Yuan's hand in farewell, speaking with considerable feeling.

Song Kun was not lying. A large portion of his work time was wasted explaining things to clients. Working with smart people was different—communication was efficient, and they immediately saw eye to eye.

It was already eleven in the morning when he left the patent company. With even a slight traffic jam on the road, he missed the Textile Laboratory's working hours.

Gao Yuan had no choice but to eat a plate of Yangzhou fried rice nearby, then sit in his car reading and thinking until the laboratory finally opened at two in the afternoon.

There was no helping it. It was, after all, a government-run institution, and everything had to follow procedure.

Overall, private enterprise was well developed throughout Jiangsu-Zhejiang. Compared with government-run institutions elsewhere in the country, those here were already relatively efficient and had a decent sense of service.

The place's full name was the New Textile Materials and Technology Laboratory. Besides researching textile fabrics, it also studied supporting machinery. It was fairly large by domestic standards, with more than twenty big names holding doctoral titles alone.

The reason a National Laboratory could be established in such a small city was, ultimately, the strength of the local textile industry.

Once upon a time, the Light Textile City in Keqiao District had been the largest giant of its kind in all of Asia.

How influential was it?

There was something called the Keqiao Index. To determine whether China's textile industry—or even the global textile industry—was thriving, one only needed to look at the Keqiao Index.

However, over the past decade, supporting factories of all sizes had continuously moved to South Asia and Southeast Asia, greatly impacting China's textile industry.

By now, most mid- and low-end production lines had already moved away. If you went into a Walmart in North America, the vast majority of products were made in Vietnam and Bangladesh. Made in China goods had gradually withdrawn from the mainstream market since 2014.

Some might say that mid- and low-end textiles had low profits anyway, so it did not matter if they left. Besides, even if those factories moved to Southeast Asia, weren't zippers and buttons still being imported from China?

That way of thinking was clearly rather naive.

As everyone knew, the West had never stopped seeking China's downfall. Its efforts to hollow out China's manufacturing industry had not begun just yesterday.

So the key was not profits, but the trend.

After all, back when China traded shirts for airplanes, the West had never imagined that in just a few decades, China would evolve into the terrifying monster it was today.

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