Shenzhen Intellectual Property Index Starts Before Hong Kong's

Race has only just begun, everything is still possible...

Congratulations to Shenzhen with its own IP Index. There is a fierce competition going on between Asian cities to become the IP hub of Asia. And have your own IP index is conducive to attain this goal. For Hong Kong, with its peculiar patent system, read here, the competition seems difficult, but who knows, the race has just started.

Read Anita Lam's SCMP article here. Hat tip to Ron Yu.

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Intellectual Property Bank in Taiwan and China (But Very Different)

Public sector

The China Post reports that the Ministry of Economic Affairs is setting up an IP bank: “The intellectual property bank is scheduled to be set up in June under the supervision of Taiwan's semi-official Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). The bank will provide “protective shield” for Taiwan-based firms, especially those in the areas of renewable energy, green energy, mobile communications, LED, and flat panel manufacturing, by building patent portfolios and providing legal advice, the MOEA said.” Read here.

銀行

Private sector

Then an initiative from the private sector in China: Zhongtian Technology Company, set up an “IP bank” too. If I understand correctly it is a repository for patents and the patentees get some points from the bank, “the score and calculation method are linked with the contribution in principle”. “Items that can cash in rewards from the bank include new product results, new technological achievements and soft science achievements that are completed by employees or teams company resources or platforms, or with the help of research institutes, as well as various rationalization proposals.” Read here.
银行
Both pairs of characters mean "bank" (literally the first character means "silver" and the second "business"). 銀行 (yin2 xing2) is the traditional version, which they use in Taiwan and Hong Kong (only there it is pronounced as "nan4 hong4") and  银行 (yin2 xing2) is the simplified version which they use is the People's Republic of China and Singapore. The difference is indeed in the left character in the metal part. The numbers refer to the pronunciation: "2" means that the tone is going up. "4" means that the tone is going down.

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Your Opinion On Draft Regulations on Patent Agency Please

On March 4, 1991 the State Council promulgated the Regulations on Patent Commissioning, which became effective on April 1, 1991, see here.

In China's 2006 Action Plan of IPR Protection, it announced its plan to revise the Regulations on Patent "in order to standardize the conduct of patent agents, safeguard the normal order of the patent agency industry, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of interested parties." The old regulations were after nearly twenty years deemed out of touch with reality.

The State Council has issued the Regulations on Patent Agency (Draft Amendments for Examination), reported by SIPO and solicited opinions "of all walks of life" before September 25, 2010 March 10, 2011.

The regulations state how someone can become a patent agent, what are the educational requirements, how a patent agency should be run and what is not allowed for agents and agencies. It is clear that the self-regulatory industry group All-China Patent Agents Association plays an important role.

The Chinese version you can see here. If someone has an English version let me now.

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IP Dragon Featured As Top 50 Patent Blog

IP Dragon was informed by the Guide to Online Schools that it was on the list of Top 50 Patent Blog. Thank you for the encouragement. Click on the banner to see the complete list.

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Why The Chinese Educational System Is Not More Conducive To Creativity: Some Hypotheses

China is the country with the most creative people in the world. That is a truism in a country with 1.3 billion people. In the past China showed the world the way to creativity: compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing, all are Chinese inventions. So why are copyright piracy, counterfeit trademarks and patent infringements that origin from China so rampant?

I have written about some of the extra-judicial factors before, see here (chapter 8), but I have overlooked one of the fundamental flaws that China has to fix: its educational system.

I assume that for an educational system that fosters creativity the following factors are of crucial importance:

- Idle/play time;

- Combining factors that have not been combined before;

- Atmosphere where experimenting (or put it another way: critical thinking) is possible.

Based on these assumptions are my hypotheses:

- Most students work too hard and too long and learn too much by rote (learning by repetition) to develop their creativity;

- Many students limit themselves by focusing exclusively on what is relevant, but often it is hard to know ex ante what the ingredients for success are going to be, and following the downtrodden path is not helpful for making new combinations or to "think outside the box" or to be open to serendipity;

- Most schools do not give enough room for experimentation;

- Although there are many ways to Beijing, parents, teachers and society at large expects students to excel and go to the Chinese Ivy League schools and universities. This puts students under immense pressure.

Of course these Hypotheses need to be tested.

I am interested in your views. Let me know. ipdragon at gmail dot com.

Read also 'How To Create The New Generation of Copyists (The Shortcut)'

UPDATE:

IP Dragon thinks this educational problem is shared by countries such as Singapore, Korea and Japan. Since these countries are no longer known for their rampant infringements of intellectual property rights the explanation becomes more convincing that China's low level of intellectual property enforcement is caused by the developmental phase it is.

UPDATE 2:

Carven, a student of St Joseph's College in Hong Kong, and member of the project affairs department of the 43rd Joint School Science Exhibition Preparation Committee wrote in the Young Post of the South China Morning Post of November 18, the article 'Lack of Creativity Limits Knowlegde'.

"The educational system in Hong Kong - in which students are spoon-fed information - has often been criticised. It leads to students having no idea how to be creative in the pursuit of knowledge."

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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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Professor David Llewlyn Explained All IPRs in One Hour

IP Dragon was attending yesterday evening the very inspiring lecture of Professor David Llewelyn at the University of Hong Kong, about the importance of intellectual property rights for not only experts, but everybody.

Professor Llewelyn made clear that the lecture was a public lecture meant for non-experts; the normal consumers; and put experts and expertise in perspective. He quoted Lord Denning that in the dictionary for example the word barrister comes directly after bankrupt and just before bastard. "IP needs to be understood, especially in this part of the world [referrring to Asia] by many constituencies that don't relate to each other. Patent people can only think about patents. Trademark people about trademarks etc." Professor Llewelyn was determined to speak only about the good things of intellectual property rights, so not about counterfeiting, pirating and the pressure of the developed countries on local developing governement officials.

Professor Llewelyn was referring to patent in all its meanings. The sentence: "It is patent" for example means "It's available." He was recalling Huawei who overtook the number one position of the company with the most patents from Panasonic. Professor Llewelyn was going to say only good things about IPRs, but as a good friend of IPRs, he critisised IPRs starting with patents: most were vanity publishing.

Then he was filleting the quality of some Hong Kong patents, and after a pit stop to the "stepsister of patents': trade secrets, he was off to trademarks. Professor Llewelyn told about the dispute between Jiangyou in Sichuan province and Anlu in Hubei province, who both claim their city as the hometown of the famous poet from the Tang dynasty called Li Bai.Jiangyou was not amused when they became familiar with a commercial on China Central Television (CCTV) that identified Anlu as the hometown of Li Bai. According to the South China Morning Post, Xinhua reported that the Jiangyou had registered the trademark "the Hometown of Li Bai, the City of Chinese Poems" in 2003. Therefore Anlu's commercial allegedly violated the trademark. Never mind that Jiangyou nor Anlu was the birthplace of the ancient poet, which was small town in what now is Kyrgyzstan, as the South China Morning Post mentioned.

Professor Llewelyn urged companies to think ahead: Chinese computer maker wanted to expand abroad, but they forsaw problems with the trademark legend that was already trademarked in many countries. Therefore they decided to change their name into Lenovo, which is distinctive enough and not descriptive or laudatory. Professor Llewelyn pointed out the possibility that trademarks could be used in an unfair manner, to bully other companies into submissiveness. As an example he gave KFC who sued an neighbourhood restaurant for infringement of the use of the trademarked term 'family feast'. He draw the history of Hong Kong artist Michael Lau and his relation to trademarks/bootlegs.

Genericide was discusses as well. Escalator, tabloid were generic names, but not roller blades.

Then the subject changed to geographical indications. The danger always lurks that two states, such as Indonesia and Malaysia start fighting over a term for food: such as who owns Nasi Lemak.

The territorial nature of intellectual property rights were discussed.

Copyrights you obtain for nothing; but the flipside is that they only forbid the right to copy; and another challenge is the digital era, as you can read in "Free", the book by Chris Anderson. Professor Llewelyn referred to China's threats to sue over fake terracotta warriors, as a subject that is outside the scope of copyrights. Professor Llewelyn compared it with the Egyptians that want to copyright the pyramids.
Normal copyrights are the life of the creator plus 50 years (China, which is TRIPs standard) or 70 years (many countries). In the UK there is special legislation for the play 'Peter Pan, or the boy who whould not grow up' to give it perpetual copyright in order to finance the Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Among intellectual property rights are strange creatures, such as database rights.
And many new players such as UNESCO are getting in to the act as well to protect rather exotic new intellectual property rights.

Intellectual property rights are liabilities, unless you do something with them. Commercialisation is getting more popular.

There are only five countries in the world with a net balance of payment: US, UK, Japan, Sweden and France. China has taken this well into account and makes sure that it is self innovating in order to avoid to pay too much royalities.

When one analyses intellectual property rights one can do it from many perspectives. An academic (access to information) has another perspective than an author of a book (control of information). Professor Llewelyn told about a student in Beijing who asked him to sign a copy of his book that was "better bound than [his publisher] Sweet & Maxwell."

Anti-competition law is becoming more important in intellectual property right law. Professor Llewelyn advocates a balance between extremes.

A development we must take an eye on is according to Llewelyn developing countries, such as India, that demand green technology of the developed world.

Hong Kong lawyers were always more interested in transactions of IPRs, registering etc. than in advising them about how to best exploit their IPRs.

In 60 minutes Professor Llewelyn covered a lot of ground. Ron Yu asked him whether IPRs are not getting too complicated for the average consumer. Professor Llewelyn answered: "Yes and also too complicated for the experts."

IP Dragon asked him about his take on the new international IPR forum ACTA, and whether it would be a threat to forums such as WIPO and WTO's TRIPs? Professor Llewelyn answered that he does not like the new forum, it will be more complicated.

So there will be a great need for people who can explain and illuminate these complicated issues in an inspiring way in the future, just like Professor Llewelyn.

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Taylor Wessing Global Intellectual Property Index and China: The Last Shall Be The First

The People's Republic of China was ranked last (24th position) in the Taylor Wessing Global Intellectual Property Index 2009, see here. The methodology of the GIPI rating is a calculation by a factor assessment model with jurisdiction assessments and instrumental factors as input. See the methodology here. 

About China's trademark system Taylor Wessing complains about the delay in adopting the new Trademark Law which it sees as the solution to the registry delays and backlogs. The time from application to publication of trademarks in China is according to Taylor Wessing currently three years and the duration of opposition procedures up to five years. It says that there is an "absence of any protection for unregistered marks, save the 230 or so marks held to be “famous” (of which only about 20 are foreign), remains a concern for respondents." Taylor Wessing is more positive about China's National IP Strategy and an electronic application system which has cut costs and allocated filing receipts and application numbers quite quickly.

About China's copyright system Taylor Wessing wrote: "China trails overall, as well as for each

of the attacking, enforcing, exploiting and cost-effectiveness subindices." The lack of effective enforcement of copyright is respondents' primary concern, as is bureaucracy associated with giving evidence, and criminal remedies that are perceived as too low, underused and with thresholds set too high, civil and administrative remedies inadequate. Taylor Wessing mentioned also the harsh criticism China received from the USTR in the Special 301 Report. The supporting argument that China faces the "the harshest and most in-depth criticism" because it was covered in 24 pages while the other 45 countries only got 16 pages is not very convincing. It is not the quantity but the quality of the commentary that counts. On a positive note Taylor Wessing acknowledged that the US government considers that progress is being made because China is fulfilling its WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) and WTO TRIPs obligations. 

About design Taylor Wessing wrote that "China’s courts have awarded $3 million to the German

bus maker, Neoplan, in one of the biggest design patent infringement awards since China joined the WTO in 2001." China’s design system which requires annual renewals of designs (plus renewal fees) is seen by respondents as onerous and in need of reform, according to Taylor Wessing.

About China's domain names system Taylor Wessing wrote that although China has liberal registration rules it ranked low, because domain names are extremely cheap to register in China, which has encouraged domain name squatters. Taylor Wessing: "It remains to be seen whether the recent exponential increase in numbers (nearly 90% last year) is an ongoing trend or a spike, and also whether brand owners’ awareness of the issue and increasing interest in doing business in China will lead to them registering more pre-emptive .cn domain name." 

About China's Patent system Taylor Wessing was quite positive: "China certainly has also made significant efforts over the past few years to improve its IP systems." The respondents appreciated China's new specialist IP courts, that are relatively much speedier than before and anticpate the Third Amendment to the Patent Law which will take effect October 1st, 2009 and will introduce the absolute international novelty standard and the possibility of compulsory licensing for patents unused within 3 years of grant. 

I am not sure whether Matthew 20:16 (King James Bible) can bring any consolation for China's low score, but here goes: "So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen."

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“A new dawn for the China health-care or… Grand theft IP?”

Guest article and picture by Mikołaj Rogowski

Back in January, Chinese government announced another one of its subsidies. This time around public health-care is the target and a sum of $128 billion is the weapon. It is no secret that it is another of Beijing’s measures of calming the nation during the year of the economic slow down, however anyone who has been in a public hospital in China will tell you that the system is indeed in need of the equipment and drugs that can be bought with such a substantial sum. Reasons aside, the dawn of new health care means that in the years to come Chinese officials will be on the medical shopping spree. Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/08/china-health-care-markets-equity-stimulus.html) has an interesting article on that topic. As Tina Wang points out, it is more than likely that most of the promised sum will go to the Chinese companies. However, in many fields of medicine there are simply no Chinese-made substitutes for the western made, high-end equipment and drugs. That leaves the government with no other choice than to contract with foreign producers. Seems that non-Chinese firms have much to gain, however it might turn out that there is even more to lose. Most if not all of the companies working in the aforementioned fields are IP-based. Without their patents and know-how their products would simply stand no chance of competing with their cheaper Chinese rivals.

The optimistic scenario: some of the items from the no doubt massive order list will not end up as targets of a disappearing act performances, only to later magically ‘reappear’ as certain solutions in ‘new’ Chinese made products.

The pessimistic picture? Remember how Russian military industry was always eager to sell their arms to the ever-expanding, ever-modernized People’s Liberation Army (People's Republic of China armed forces)? Seems that lately they have had a change of heart. After long negotiations concerning the sale of Sukhoi Su-33 Flanker-D carrier-borne fighters Russian party decided to scrap the deal because of the… Fear of the IP theft. Russians claim that China has already copied most of the equipment they have sold them. (More on this topic here: http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20090313/120554173.html). A month after the fiasco of that deal China Association for Science and Technology publishes an article in which it stated that "In some areas, Chinese weapons have either achieved or are very close to achieving international advanced standards,". (The China Post: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/china/national-news/2009/04/13/204090/China-says.htm) The question that just begs to be asked, assuming the report is trustworthy, is how did the Chinese industry reach such levels of standards and if the theft of the IP was one of the main factors that led to this achievement, what would stop the Chinese medical industry from doing the same thing?

It certainly would not be the first time. Thanks to a friend of mine I had an opportunity to talk to a executive at Optopol ( http://optopol.com/en/), a renowned Polish firm specializing in manufacturing of diagnostics equipment in ophthalmology. They have sold a few units of their devices in China and they were met with a disturbing pattern. Most of the equipment was returned shortly, labeled as nonfunctioning. After a brief inspection it turned out that all of the returned machines bared signs of disassembly and whoever did the dismantling had a much harder time putting the machines back together – hence the returns of the “faulty” equipment. Now why would anyone want to take these machines apart, I wonder? What is even more disturbing is that this practice seems not be local - different copies of their products were sent to various locations in china, with the same results.

What do you think? Have any of the readers had any similar experience with products that were sold in China?

For more on the reform check: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123982492165322167.html

Text and picture Mikołaj Rogowski

Mikolaj 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.

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How to Protect Traditional Chinese Medicine?

Recently I have been corresponding about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and which intellectual property rights (IPR) can protect them. I just read Mr or Ms Jia's interesting paper on TCM (Jia Q., The World Health Organization, 'Traditional Chinese Medicine Could Make "Health for One" [Come] True', 2006) which includes a very interesting chapter on intellectual property rights:

4.3. No good methods have been developed to protect traditional knowledge starting at page 64. Jia gives a discription of 10 different methods to protect TCM (I have numbered the list and wrote the IPR in bold):

1. "Trade secret: It has a long history of thousands of years in China and it is one of the important protective methods.

2. National secret: It is one of the most effective methods of all protections now that only finite TCM products enjoy such protection like Yunnan Baiyao capsule.

3. Trademark protection: It is the weak link which TCM industry is liable to be trespassed on. For example, trademark of the Beijing Tongrentang Co. Ltd, which is one of the oldest and well-known corporations of TCM, was even enrolled by a Japanese company in 1983.

4. Geographical indication: It is a kind of protection aimed mainly at trueborn medicinal herbs or the products made from them.

5. Patent protection: It is the strongest methods to protect inventions. But patent system isn’t considered suitable for traditional medicine except those innovative products.

6. Protection and inspection of new medicine: In 2002, administrative protection of new medicine was abolished and inspective duration for new medicine of 5 years, in which the same produces can’t be manufactured as well as imported by other corporations was set up.

7. Protection of Chinese medicines: There novelty is not required and the protective limit is from 30 to 7 years. The protective species have reached to 1668 in which 12 kinds of species belong to the first class of protection.

8. Copyright system: It contains books, articles, prescriptions and instructions.

9. New herb species: It is often developed by cultivation or domesticated from wild species which are newly found.

10. Frontier protection of the intellectual property: It could be applied to the customhouse through which the tortious products export or import."

Ad 5. As Jia already points out, TCM are not well suited to the patent system. A patent needs to be novel, innovative and have practical applicability. By definition TCM are traditional, and not novel. Therefore only innovative use of TCM can be patented. But the special characteristics of TCM make it even more difficult to patent them. TCM are not just curative, but have a preventive part as well. And they are focused on syndromes not diseases (separate diseases can be prognosed as the same syndrome). TCM is catered to the individual and can by definition not be standardised. Its philosophy is holistic, which means no body/mind dichotomy, therefore mind cultivating methods, such as acupuncture, moxibustion, massage, taiji, qigong, next to herbal medicine, are part of TCM. It is also very hard to pinpoint the effective substance of a TCM, since many substances are used in one TCM which supposedly all contribute to the end result.

Ad 7. Protection of Chinese Medicines. This is a sui generis, which might be promising. The idea is to avoid the situation that Chinese people infringe some foreign patent by using or selling a TCM. "Meanwhile, our own TCM is frequently applied for patents by other countries, which reminds us of the serious situation that Chinese traditional medicine knowledge is encountering,"see here. Regulations on the Protection of Types of Traditional Chinese Medicine, effective 1993, see here.

Thanks Ron Yu (Novacourses) and Laurent Gaberell.

Picture by Jonas in China (some rights reserved)

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The Future of Innovation in China: "China Will Overtake Position Germany in 20 years" Or "Not in Our Life Time"

I just listened to the IP Think Tank Podcast of February 16, 2009 which is an initiative of Duncan Bucknell Company. Besides an interesting review of the WTO report on DS 362, the IP Think Tank Podcast has a lot to offer to any IPR enthusiast. At the end, Mr Nicholas Redfearn, Rouse country manager in Hong Kong, told about two recent books that convey two diametrical opposite views of China's path to patent and innovation growth (the assumption implied is that there is a strong correlation between the growth of patents and innovation in a country).

• Hutton, Will, 'Writing on The Wall (which refers to idiom: portent of doom or misfortune, see here): Why We Must Embrace China as a Partner or Face It as an Enemy', Simon & Schuster, November 2006. Mr Hutton writes according to Mr Redfearn: "the number of triadic patents (US, Europe and Japan) from China is too small for it to sustain the kind of growth and innovation you read about."
• Gupta, Anil K., Haiyan Wang, 'Getting China and India right: Strategies for Leveraging the World's Fastest-Growing Economies for Global Advantage' Wiley, John & Sons, February 2009, while Messrs. Gupta and Wang argue, according to Mr Redfearn: "China is producing vast numbers of patents and with the current rate it will overtake Germany by 2020."

Gupta and Wang's book is the most recent, whether it will be more accurate on this, we will have to see. What is your opinion about it? Let me know (ipdragon at gmail dot com). Listen to the IP Think Tank Podcast here.

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China Ready To Make Money With Homebred 3G Standard TD-SCDMA

Ek Heng of Telecommunications Online writes that it is expected that China Mobile will receive a license for TD-SCDMA, a 3G standard developed by China, in order to be less dependent on foreign patent holders, avoid paying patent fees and trying to license it outside of China. The license for W-CDMA will probably go to China Unicom and China Telecom will get the CDMA2000 license.

Ek Heng writes: "Expenditure on 3G networks is seen by the Chinese government as one of the measures to offset the slowing economic growth. The rewards in terms of intellectual property that can accrue from the success of China’s TD-SCDMA will be massive and much attention will be focused on how it stands to the rigours of full commercial operation."

Read the article on Telecommunications Online here.

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The Importance of 'Practical Applicability' in China's Patent Law

Ms Ester H. Lim (Finnegan Shanghai) and Ms Angela Y. Dai (Finnegan Washington, D.C.) wrote a nice article about their take on IP in China for the WorldTrade Magazine called 'Policy Perspectives: The Current Reality with IP in China'.

It includes a discription of the case Merck & Co. versus Henan Topfond Pharmaceutical Co., about a patent on a hair-loss drug, which illustrates the importance of pratical applicabililty in China's Patent Law:

"Instead of risking infringement, Topfond challenged Merck’s patent at the Patent Reexamination Board of the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China. The Board found the Merck patent to be invalid based on China’s Patent Law and Implementing Regulations, which require that the patented invention have “practical applicability,” meaning that the invention can be made or used and can produce effective results. Because Merck never marketed the drug in China even though it had the patent since 1996, its patented drug failed to have any perceived practical applicability."

Read Ms Lim and Ms Dai's article here.

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Hong Kong's Top e-filers of Patent, Trademark and Design Right Applications

According to the Intellectual Property Department (IPD) of the Hong Kong Government the top e-filers of all e-transactions in 2008 were:

Ranking	Firms
1	UNDISCLOSED
2	DEACONS
3	WILKINSON & GRIST
4	JSM
5	BAKER & MCKENZIE
6	SIT, FUNG, KWONG AND SHUM SOLICITORS
7	CLT PATENT & TRADEMARK (H.K.) LIMITED
8	CHINA.HK INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SERVICES CO., LTD.
9	MARKS & CLERK
10	NTD PATENT & TRADE MARK AGENCY LIMITED
11	ELLA CHEONG (HK) LIMITED
12	VIVIEN CHAN & CO.
13	HASTINGS & CO.
14	ROBIN BRIDGE & JOHN LIU
15	LIU, SHEN & ASSOCIATES

So who do you think is on number one? Please tell me ipdragon (at) gmail (d0t) com.

Read more here.

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China's Third Patent Amendment: Curb Your Enthousiasm

China's upcoming third amendment of its patent law has moved a lot of pens, or rather fingers, to write critiques and analyses.

Mr Timonthy J. Maier partner of Maier & Maier PLLC, a law firm in Alexandria Virginia (US) and blogger of Post-Grant gives a good overview of the most controversial paragraphs of the draft. These include articles 49, 50 and 74, read Mr Maier's article here.

Mr Thomas T. Moga of law firm Butzel Long, which is a member of the China Alliance (which includes two other US law firms: Armstrong Teasdale LLP, Michael Best & Friedrich LLP, and Canadian Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP and is combining its resources to support their clients in China), is looking whether the draft is compliant to the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property rights (TRIPs), read here.

Read the draft and the comments upon it by the International Chamber of Commerce the World Business Organization (ICC) here. The comments of the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) can be found here.

The Fédération Internationale Des Conseils En Intellectuele Propriété (FIDCI) has an elaborate power point presentation about the subject here.

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Cheng Yongshun's Critique On US Patent Reform Act Ammuniton To Opposites

Philip Brooks' Patent Infringement Update has a great post called 'China Weighs in on Patent Reform Bill', read here.

It is great when intellectual property scholars of different countries can learn from each other. For a long time a stream of advice on and ideas about IP flowed mainly from Europe and the US in the direction of China. Now, the critique of Chen Yongshun, director of the Beijing Intellectual Property Institute, deemed worthy of translation by the opposites of the US Patent Reform Bill ( H.R. 1908 and S. 1145). Thanks Philip for uploading the translation of Cheng's article and the original.

Read the translation of Cheng Yongshun here. US Representatives Michael Michaud and Donald Manzullo use Cheng's critique in an alert letter called 'Chinese Spell Out Weakness Of Patent Reform Act' as ammunition to try to sink the Patent Reform Act, without really discussing the contents of the bill, at least not in their alert letter.

In the alert letter Cheng was quoted saying:
"It is not bad news for developing countries which have fewer patents. Many of the Chinese companies are not patent owners in the U.S. market and their products are often excluded from the market because of patent infringement accusations. This bill will give the companies from developing countries more freedom and flexibility to challenge the relative U.S. patent for doing business in U.S. and make it less costly to infringe."

Michaud and Manzullo write: "[..] ominously, Mr Cheng suggests to his Chinese readers that "The US law could be used as reference when we make the third amendment of Chinese patent law.""

When messrs. Michaud and Mazullo's alert letter is uploaded somewhere please let me know, so I can link to it.
UPDATE: Patent Warrior sent me the link here. Thanks Patent Warrior.

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Preferring Price Discrimination Over Sidestepping Patents?

Andrew Jack of the Financial Times wrote an article about discussions between 500 representatives of government, industry and NGO's about patents at the World Health Organisation.

The article, which is named 'Pressure over patents forces pharma on to the back foot' mentions a possible and intriguing solution to tackle the tension between accessibility of medicines in poor countries and return on investment by using patents.

"The trade-off is whether richer patients in poorer but fast-growing countries such as India, China and Brazil should not contribute more to the overall costs of medical innovation, rather than simply paying the marginal production cost of drugs.
Companies such as GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer have been studying whether they can introduce more differential pricing within developing countries, charging less to poorer patients while preventing richer ones from getting those drugs as cheaply."

Price discrimination between rich and poor patients. Unemployment benefits, if any, could include medicines for example. Read Mr Jack's article here. Hat tip to Jeff Roberts of McGill's great CIPP "IP News This Week". See also the CIPP Blog here, by IP scholars from McGill University.

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SIPO: "Digital Radio Standard Will Shake Few Foreign Companies' Dominance"

SIPO reports that the Ministry of Information Technology released a national standard on multi-channel digital radio coding and decoding technology for the digital radio industry.

And it wrote reassuringly: "The standard which be widely used in digital television and digital radio will shake few foreign companies' dominance in the field."

China is pushing home-bred innovations and standards to be not so dependent anymore on foreign patents.

Read SIPO's article here.

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Pfizer Accuses Guangzhou Welman Of Copyright Infringement

Pfizer sued Guangzhou Welman for alleged copyright infringement of Viagra reports Forbes.

I wonder why Pfizer's allegations focused on copyright infringement instead of patent infringement, or both. Or is copyright used mistakingly as the prototype of an intellectual property? Read more here

In 2001 Pfizer obtained a Chinese patent license for Viagra
July 2004 SIPO's Patent Review Board revoked its license after complaints by 12 Chinese pharmaceutical companies: Pfizer failed to accurately explain the uses of the pill's key ingredient, sildenafil citrate.
June 2, 2006 the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court reversed the review board's verdict and upheld Pfizer's patent. Read more here.
12 Chinese pharmaceutical firms have launched an appeal against this ruling. Read more here.

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Haier Files 2.6 Patent Applications Per Day

Gao Hucheng, the Vice-Minister of Commerce, wrote an article about the need for China to improve its brands and IPRs in order to become internationally more competitive.

Haier, the Chinese posterchild that is taking its brand very serious, "put[s] forth 2.6 patents each day on average and takes the lead among all household appliance enterprises in China with it total 6,189 patents."

Other Chinese companies include: "Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Co., Ltd. [which] has obtained over 20 world leading key technologies for container cranes and the Dual 40 Feet Containers' Quayside Container Crane invented by the company can improve the efficiency of handling containers by over 60 percent. Relying on the globally exclusive technology, Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Co., Ltd. has seized 50 percent of the world's port machinery market. A second example is that Chery Automobile Co., Ltd. has jointly developed 18 kinds of worldly leading gasoline and diesel engines with its partners and exported such engines to various countries, and it is expected that it will export 13,000 engines to the USA this year. The sales of other products with independent brands of Huawei Technologies Ltd, ZTE Corp., and Kangnai Group Co., Ltd. in the international markets are also increasing steadily."

It's interesting to glance over these sites, since they give you an impression of the aspirations each of these mentioned brands have.

Read the translation of Gao's article on China Economic Net here.

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