New Red Dawn in Patents: More Chinese than Foreign Companies Filed Chinese Invention Patents

Joff Wild of IAM Magazine has another great blog: 'Major breakthrough for Chinese companies in the patenting stakes' , read here.

Mr Wild observes that according to SIPO's statistics the first half of 2009 show that Chinese domestic companies filed more invention patents than foreign companies. In 2007 only 1 percent of all Chinese companies filed any patent. That is 99 percent to go. Mr Wild: "Can you imagine the numbers involved when, say, 10% of them are making use of the patent system?"

Yes, an exciting era has started.

Picture: Alfred Smith

CC BY-SA 2.0

Cherkizovsky Market Closed Because of Counterfeit and Pirated Goods From China

Cherkizovsky Market, Russia's biggest market was closed down after discovery of more than 6,000 containers of counterfeit and pirated goods from China worth US$ 2 billion. The market was described by Russia Today (RT) as a "country within a country". Read RT's article and watch their video about it here.

Global Times, China's other official publication beside Xinhua, does not mention the reason for the closure at all in an article called 'Can-do Russians work around trade problems', read here.

News From The Front Lines

Guest article and picture by Mikołaj Rogowski

Writing that the all-front global IPR war between the owners and the infringers is well underway might sound a bit of a truism so I will simply skip to the notable news from the trenches.

Chinese government owned China Daily and Taiwanese China Post both have some worth reading articles regarding details of the Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Courts recent decision. The amount of +67000 dollars of compensation is by no means a substantial sum for a corporate giant of Microsoft’s size but it’s more than sure that it will be a motivation for the likes of Strongwel to make sure that no one under their roof is selling computers with illegal software.

Remember how some of the commentators used to mention that a time will come when the entire trend of litigation against Chinese based entities will turn against some weiguo firms? The time is now, it seems : China Post reports that Wall Mart and Best Buy have been sued in US court, by a Chinese company on the grounds of patent infringement. The article has some interesting data regarding the number of Chinese patent applications.

Final piece of news: not surprisingly my previous post on the topic of the health reform in china and what it means for the “western” medical companies is not the only material that focuses on the opportunities and threats that come with this Chinese reform. Go to Reuters. Once again, some very interesting numbers are attached.

This is the third guest contribution of Mikołaj Rogowski, law student at Jagiellonian University, author of several IP articles and Polish-English translations, specializes in Polish, European, Chinese and American IP law, China assistant to MEP Jan Olbrycht. His first guest contribution can be found here, second here.

Good Old Days of Counterfeiting in Hong Kong?

Adrian Burden of No to Fakes interviewed Sarah McCartney, the writer of the book Fake Factor.

Sarah McCartney: "A couple of decades ago people could only buy fakes if they went abroad for them. Part of the fun of visiting Hong Kong was coming back with a fake luxury watch that you'd got by going to a secret backstreet shop with a man who whispered at you in the street as you explored the market stalls. You'd fool your friends, then explain how you could tell the difference, adding a bit of insider knowledge to your illicit purchase. It was about being daring and exotic and had a bit of James Bond glamour to it."

Well, although this depiction of the counterfeit products purchasing of yesteryear is a bit too romantic, I agree with that counterfeiting has expanded enourmously. And these days one can hardly tell the difference between genuine and fake products.

Read the interview here.

Effect of DS362 on Copyright Piracy in China Nil?

Rogier Creemers of the University of Maastricht, Faculty of Law, has written an interesting article that will be published in the forthcoming number of European Intellectual Property Review:

'The Effects of WTO Case DS362 on Audiovisual Media Piracy in China'.

"The outcome of the recent WTO case China - Intellectual Property Rights, mainly concerned with copyright matters, was touted by both the U.S. and China as a victory. Looking beyond the rhetoric, however, shows that the effect of this case on copyright piracy in the real world is limited. The article outlines the case and analyzes its effects. Furthermore, it widens the scope of analysis, to include other factors influencing IP infringements in China, which are crucial in creating and supporting copyright piracy."

You can download the 22-page article from the SSRN site here.

Obama Endorses Fake Blackberry? Yea, right...

Jason Dean and Ellen Zhu of China Journal of the WSJ, have a nice post about a rip-off version of Blackberry called Blockberry which pretends in an advertisement to be endorsed by the president of the USA. Read here. I ask myself why did they not call the apparatus Obamaberry in the first place?

Thank you Sir CH of Mobimania (new site will be up soon)

Recession + E-commerce = Counterfeiting

Robert Klara wrote a very nice article: 'The Fight Against Fakes' for Brandweek.

His article is about:

• the economic crisis and advent of e-commerce that prove to be a fatal mix for brands; trademarks are increasingly being infringed upon; if global dimension of this fatal mix is well described by Mr Klara: "The same Wild West quality of the Internet that makes it so enticing to shoppers is also why it's most terrifying for upscale brands, most of which have little hope of foiling the sale of a fake handbag made in China and bought by a customer in South Carolina from a Web site based in Estonia."
• consumer education campaigns such as FakesAreNeverInFashion.com and Fake Watches Are for Fake People (see picture);
• brands that produce mass-market extensions of their high-end lines in China, so that they are easier to copy;
• ACTA (anti-counterfeiting treaty agreement);
• At the end of the article Mr Klara mentions luxury good firms such as Luis Vuitton and l'Oréal as plaintiffs against eBay about the question who is liable in case of goods offered on eBay that are intellectual property infringements. Mr Klara writes: "Some legal experts predict this latest ruling from London will effectively end suits against eBay." I believe that some legal experts predict this, but I do not agree with them.

Mr Klara interviewed representatives of intellectual property firm Marks & Clerk, fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar, CMO Council (council for chief marketing officers), INTA (International Trademark Association), Luxury Institute, Federation of Swiss Watches, Swiss watchmaker Les Cubeurs and the Fragrance Foundation.

Good article, read here.

Article 6ter Paris Convention Online: Hong Kong (2), China (0), Netherlands (37)

March 31, 2009, WIPO's first electronic publication of signs, emblems etc. protected under article 6ter Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, see here. On this day (July 13, 2009), if you type in China, you see only the emblem and flag of Hong Kong S.A.R. witn the stylised form of Bauhemia Blakeana. That is a very small number for such a big country such as the People's Republic of China (0) and Hong Kong (2), compared to the tiny Netherlands which protects 37 signs, emblems (including for such collective marks as Holland Cheddar Cheese etc), Germany (128), USA (117), United Kingdom (38), Italy (32). Then again Japan and France each only had two signs in the database.

EU Customs Report 2008 About IPR Enforcement Activities not IPR Infringements from China

Yesterday the European Commission Directorate-General Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD) published the 'Report on EU Customs Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights. Results at the European Border 2008'.

On page 9 we find a crucial alinea, which disclaims the scope the report:

"Although the overall amount of IPR infringing goods entering or leaving the EU cannot be

ascertained from these figures, or whether the problem is growing, the figures do show that IPR

enforcement continues to be a priority for customs authorities in the EU."

Of course it would be interesting to know whether the IPR infringements that originate from China were growing or decreasing. That was the very reason why I devised theEnforcement/Infringement Ratio, see here.

The report states that 80 percent of the cases concerned seizures that were requested by the right holder and that 20 percent of the cases were done on the initiative of customs (ex-officio). So the number of cases and articles detained and the percentages of the countries of origin and provenance were all these products come from are interesting, but only show the perception of the right holders and customs of the goods that are suspected of infringing IPRs. A few times in the report the distinction is not made between seized goods that may or may not infringe IPRs and goods that actually do infringe IPRs.

Read the report here.

Thank you Rogier Creemers for pointing out to me the report.

Fake iPhones: Rip-off or Innovation

iPhone in relation to China is in the news again. Stan Abrams of China Hearsay wrote about the alleged looming problems with Apple's iPhone trademark in China, see here. And then I was interviewed by Sophie Pilgrim of France 24, the French BBC so to say, about a video by MacMedics and about iPhones, counterfeiting and what you can do about it.

However, the third point I make about what to do against counterfeiting was not: "Get a strong legal team. This isn’t very useful in China, though, where foreign companies are afraid of saying anything because they want to continue investing in the country, since it’s very cheap to manufacture there."

It must be:

"Register your IPR's (or so you will get a strong legal team). But you need to be willing to litigate. Some foreign companies are afraid of saying anything because they don't want to jeopardise their investments in the country, and they want to keep on manufacturing there, since it is still relatively cheap."

You can check out the interview here.