Friday, March 18, 2011

Online infringement and ISP liability

The IP Dragon hasn’t been seen for 2 weeks now. IP Komodo wonders if his cousin might return soon and is worried about the mess, especially since IP Komodo tends to leave the remains of his lunch lying around...

Some interesting online IPR news IP Komodo has spotted:

Chinese authors accuse Baidu, China's biggest search engine of copyright violations, by its free online excerpts of unauthorized stories and books. On March 15, World Consumer Rights Day, more than 40 writers said in an open letter that Baidu stole their work and infringed their copyrights. Fang Zhouzi, (well-known for exposing academic fraud), told Xinhua that he could find almost all of his work in Baidu's online library. A welcome change to the parade of foreign complainants, IP Komodo thinks.

The State Level AIC is about to issue new regulations on internet IPR infringement aimed particularly at at tackling online piracy and counterfeiting. Evidence and jurisdiction will be covered, according to the vice Minister who announced it at the close of the National Peoples Congress session on Monday.

ISP takedown. Taobao.com, China's leading B2C website, announced on Monday that it will launch a campaign to stop online piracy and counterfeiting. The move comes after the site was labelled by USTR as a "notorious market". Last year, taobao.com deleted more than 5.7 million products involved in copyright infringement. Taobao will set up a special team responsible for checking for piracy and counterfeiting.

Guest post by IP Komodo Dragon

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