Senior Chinese and European patent officials on Tuesday signed here bilateral cooperation agreements, deepening ties between the two sides on intellectual property rights (IPR) protections.

These documents, including a bilateral cooperation annual work plan for 2011, were hammered out during talks between Tian Lipu, Commissioner of China's State Intellectual Property Office, and Benot Battistelli, president of the European Patent Office (EPO).

During the talks, the two sides reviewed past achievement in cooperation between the two offices and discussed detailed plans for future cooperation.

Battistelli told Xinhua after the signing ceremony that he had very fruitful talks with his Chinese counterpart.

"China is becoming a major player in IPR, and it is very largely due to the efficiency and quality of STPO," Battistelli said.

Tian for his part also expressed satisfaction in the talks, saying the two sides had reached consensus in many fields concerning IPR protections.

He particularly noted that one of the agreements was to provide Chinese patent documents to European clients and innovators through a cooperation project called Machine Translation, expanding their understanding about innovation level in China.

"Introducing modern IPR system in China had benefited transnational corporations substantially, making it possible for them to invest and establish research and development facilities in China. They had also benefited hugely from collecting copy rights fees of various kind including those of patents, trademarks, publications, softwares and films," Tian said.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of founding of SIPO and the 25th anniversary of cooperation between SIPO and EPO.