Current Status of the Farming Industry of Chinese Giant Salamander and Development Directions of Health Products from This Amphibian: An Analysis from the Perspective of Intellectual Property Rights

Chinese giant salamander is a rare species endemic to China and is a traditional food and medicinal animal. Its meat is delicious, and more importantly, its meat, bone, skin, viscera, oil and mucus are rich in bioactive ingredients and have high food and medicinal values. With the rapid development of the farming industry of Chinese giant salamander, the improvement of people’s living standards and the enhancement of health awareness, high value-added products from farmed giant salamander with unique nutrients and nutraceutical functions have a wide development prospect, which is supported by the policy and law for the conservation of wild resources and the rational utilization of the second generation of cultivated Chinese giant salamanders. However, China lags in scientific research on the bioactive ingredients and deep processing technologies of cultivated Chinese giant salamanders, and the exploitation and utilization of farmed Chinesegiant salamander resources for ‘big health’ are still in its infancy. Here, we comprehensively review and analyze all of the intellectual property rights pertaining to the development and utilization of farmed Chinese giant salamander resources from multiple perspectives such as the trends of patent application, topic distribution of technical invention contents and patent quality, aiming to provide insights toward the development of value-added functional health products from cultivated Chinese giant salamander.