IPR Jurisdiction: Third Civil Division of Haining Municipal People's Court Specialises in Copyright and Trademark Disputes

Haining Municipal People's Court in Zhejiang Province set up the Third Civil Division, specializing the trial of civil cases concerning copyright disputes, trademark disputes and other related types of intellectual property rights disputes. Read the article here.

First instance IP appeal cases of TRAB and PRB will be heard by the IP Tribunal of the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court. Read the article by Howard Tsang and Lilian Shi of Wilkinson & Grist for Managing Intellectual Property Magazine here.

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Indian High Court Claims Jurisdiction Against Chinese Cybersquatter of ICICIGROUP.COM

Malathi Nayak of Livemint has a very interesting article about who has the jurisdiction over Chinese entities if they infringe intellectual property rights via the internet. In this case a Chinese entity had registered the domain name icicigroup.com which is similar to icicibank.com.

First the icicibank tried to get control over the domain name by filing a complaint with the WIPO’s Arbitration and Mediation Center (AMC) using the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. To no avail.

Malathi Nayak wrote:

"In December, justice Sanjiv Khanna [of India's High Court, IP Dragon] passed an order restraining a resident of Beijing, Chuandong Xu, and a Chinese website registrar, HiChina Web Solutions Ltd, from using or selling the site ICICIGROUP.COM.
The order was passed ex parte or in the absence of the defendant. The same court had heard a 2007 case, in which India TV Independent News Service Pvt. Ltd sued US-based India Broadcast Live Llc. over thewww.indiatvlive.com domain name. In October, it dismissed India TV’s suit and allowed India Broadcast Live to use the name.
The two cases mark a trend where Indian courts are ruling on cybersquatting cases involving people and firms from different geographies—not all of which may fall under their jurisdiction."

The enforceability of such cross-border rulings are in general doubtful. However, Saikrishna Rajagopal, partner at Saikrishna and Associates, who filed the suit for ICICI bank, said that the Chinese defendants have complied with the high court order.

Read more Malathi Nayak's article here.

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Deadline Submissions for Special Provincial Review of IPR in China Approaches

February 26, before 5 pm is the deadline for public comments concerning the locations and issues that should be the focus of a special provincial review of IPR in China.

April 28, 2006 the USTR released its annual Special 301 Report and announced to conduct a special provincial review.

"The goal of this review is to spotlight strengths, weaknesses, and inconsistencies, in and among specific jurisdictions, and to inform the Special 301 Review of China as a whole."

"Jurisdictions at the provincial level might include in addition to China's provinces (sheng), the four municipalities (shi) of Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai, Tianjin, as well as China's five autonomous regions (zizhiqu)."

If the transparency increases at a regional level, countries can treat the regions that protect and enforce IPR adequately in a preferential way.

Read more here.

Richard Brubaker of All Roads Lead to China included the following question, while conducting a 20 city survey on manufacturing: "Are there any specific cases where IPR suits have been filed, and what was the outcome?" Read the results of the survey for Ningbo, Wuhan, Xian, Xiamen, Nanjing and Chendu here.

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