Hong Kong Olympic Games: "Dress Code and Leave Branded Gifts At Home"

Mr Stephen Selby, director of the Intellectual Property Department urges spectators to the Olympic equestrian (horses) event in Hong Kong to abide by the Olympic rules on brand protection and advertising. This means that in the Olympic stadium and venues you can not wear clothes with large or obvious advertising of a brand. If people wear these, they have to remove them or cover them. And spectators cannot carry branded gifts that were handed outside the stadium.

See article 4C House Rules for Spectators (Ticket Holders):
No form of unauthorized publicity, commercial or otherwise, and no form of political propaganda, appearing on flags, banners, clothing, sportswear, accessories or, more generally, on any article of clothing or equipment whatsoever worn or used by spectators, athletes or other participants in the events is permitted. However, this shall not apply to identification of the manufacturer of the article or equipment concerned, provided that such identification shall not be marked conspicuously for the purposes of advertising.

and article 5A House Rules for Spectators (Ticket Holders):

Persons entering venues are prohibited from bringing any of the following items without authority: Any banners, propaganda, leaflets, and/or other promotional and display materials, the contents of which are discriminatory, political, or have any association with the activities described in para. (4) c. and d. above;

Read Mr Selby's press briefing last August 2 here.

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Smoking, the New Olympic Sport. What About Torching Your Smoke? Demonstration Sport

Smoking and sport seems like a match of heaven. At least that might be the thought process of some counterfeiters who were caught by Beijing police:

"Beijing police said on Wednesday they had detained seven people for allegedly producing and selling counterfeit cigarettes, some bearing the Beijing Olympic Games emblem on the packaging."

Read the Xinhua article here.

And how to light up your smoke? Of course, with an Olympic torch...

Gao Ying writes for China View that "Hong Kong customs officers have arrested a 33-year-old woman for selling counterfeit Beijing 2008 Olympic Games torches on an Internet auction site."

Read the China View article via Xinhua here.

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ASK TongFang Donates RFID System to 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

Tsinghua TongFang, the joint-venture of French RFID company ASK, will donate the whole RFID system to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games Organizing Committee which including the RFID inlays, gate readers, software and service. Read more here. Head tip to counterfeit.com.

The Tennis Master Cup in Shanghai in 2005 was also using RFID tickets, read here. And China is developing its own RFID standard to own the IPRs, read here.

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TGIF: Satire Lashes Out At China's Olympic Logo

Thank goodness it's Friday again!

Brand owners are not always pleased with the way other people use/abuse their logo in the name of satire. With the following cartoon I am sure the Chinese government and the Chinese Olympics Committee will not be amused. Hat tip to Jeremy Phillips of the renowned IP Kat that links to Vincent Chow's cartoon on 'How Beijing 2008 got its logo' see here.

In February IP Dragon pleaded for a satire limitation of a trademark right: 'Should trademark law have a sense of humour?', read here. What do you think?

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Eyewitness Reports Fake Olympic Merchandise Omnipresent in Beijing's Tourist Area

Despite more positive reports in the past, see here and special regulations on the protection of products with the Olympic logo in 2002, see here, infringements of Olympic IPRs is widespread in Beijing's tourist areas, according to eyewitness correspondent Mr Rene A. Henry in his article ' Special from Beijing: Fake Olympic Merchandise Big Seller in China':

"Probably the most egregious was at the Great Wall. Here BOCOG [Beijing Olympic Committee for the Olympic Games IP Dragon] has two officially licensed stores selling their complete product lines. I saw vendors selling their fake products right outside the door of these licensed stores, which provide royalties and income for BOCOG."

Read Mr Henry's article for the Huntington News here.

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Founder Sues Blizzard Over Font Copyright Infringements

Xinhua news reported about California-based Blizzard Entertainment (owned by Vivendi, a French media and telecom company) being sued by Chinese font producer Founder Electronics at the Beijing Municipal Higher People's Court, because of alleged font copyright infringements in its massively multiplayer online (mmo) games World of Warcraft.

"A statement from Founder Electronics said five fonts from its database were used without authorization in the popular on-line fantasygame World of Warcraft (WoW), resulting in losses of one billion yuan."

Despite these alleged losses of one billion yuan, Founder Electronics claims 100 million yuan for lost earnings, because of non-authorised use of the fonts of Chinese characters.

Read the Xinhua article on the site of China.com in English here.

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China's Wish To Circumvent 3G Royalties Has Its Price

December 29, 2005 IP Dragon referred to China's efforts to come up with their own version of 3G telephony to avoid paying royalties to foreign patent right holders, see here.

According to the Economist of June 14th, China has committed itself to the International Olympic Comité (IOC) to have a “third generation” (3G) mobile-phone network available in time for the games. 3G will probably be available in time, although on a limited scale, according to the Economist.

The Economist offers some explanations why China does not choose to issue licences allowing China's operators to build 3G networks using one of the two international 3G technology standards (UMTS and CDMA2000).

"[..] Chinese bureaucrats have instead been pushing a proprietary Chinese standard, called TD-SCDMA, that could circumvent royalties to Western companies and enhance China's reputation for innovation. The development of this new technology has taken years and cost a fortune, but it is still not ready. The government does not want to issue the 3G licences until its home-grown technology is ready to compete with foreign standards. But the plan to establish TD-SCDMA as a global 3G standard and sell gear to other countries now seems doomed to fail."

Read the Economist article 'Telecoms in China, Olympic Hurdle' here.

Read more about China's efforts to come up with proprietary standards for Audio Video Coding, here, multi-channel digital radio coding and decoding, here, and RFID, here.

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Is China a responsible international stakeholder, does it comply with WTO's TRIPS?

November 16, the chairman and vice chairman gave a preview of the 2006 Annual Report to Congress of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC). The Commission was established in 2000 to monitor aspects of China’s behavior after Congress voted to admit it to the World Trade Organization (the WTO), including TRIPS. USCC tracka and advisea Congress on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the United States and China.

USCC Chairman Larry Wortzel made a statement at the release of the Annual Report:
"China has demonstrated that it understands many of its obligations to the 149 other members of the World Trade Organization. China has made considerable progress in writing the internal legislation and regulations to comply with the agreements it made nearly five years ago to join the WTO. But China is falling short on its implementation of those new laws and regulations and is failing to adequately enforce laws already on its books. One glaring example: China's obligation under the WTO to combat the illegal piracy of intellectual property. China has fallen woefully short of complying with international rules that protect intellectual property."

Vice Chairman Carolyn Bartholomew added in the following statement: "On the trade front, China has failed to fulfull many of the obligations on internal market-oriented reforms it made when it joined the WTO. Rampant piracy of intellectual property, for example, continues across the country. Entire towns can depend on the revenue generated by counterfeiting. The Chinese government has failed to control such violations and typically prefers administrative fines rather than the more effective avenue of criminal prosecutions. Yet during the Commission's trip to China last June, amid the excuses from Chinese authorities about their inability to control counterfeiting, a stark contradiction presented itself: Chinese authorities had somehow managed to prevent any counterfeiting of the 2008 Beijing Olympic logos."

Update the Annual Report itself can be found here.

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