Must Read Monday: Kan Zu On The Art Of Patent Enforcement

Medium shifting from Sun Tzu to Kan Zu:
patents instead of arms,
LED screen instead of bamboo

Sun Tzu wrote about the Art of War. Competition between companies is a kind of war, whereby the only potential fatality is the bankruptcy of a company. The offensive and defensive weaponry are patents. Kan Zu, attorney at Unitalen, wrote as a modern day Sun Tzu a highly interesting treatise on patents: 'The Influence of New Patent Law and Interpretation on Patent Enforcement in China'. It deals with double patenting, design patents, claim construction and interpretation, doctrine of equivalents and file wrapper estoppel, means-plus-function claims, prior art defenses, declaratory judgments and remedies.


Prepare for battle, read Kan Zu's article here.

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Face Saving Cultures Don't Like to Make An Apology

Mr Piter de Weerd, editor of Boek9.nl (Dutch) Book9.nl (English), the excellent blog about intellectual property rights in the Netherlands, pointed me to the article of
Seattle Trademark Lawyer Mr Michael Atkins, who was startled about the remedies Japan's cosmetic giant Shiseido was seeking against the Chinese users of the Shidoas trademark: damages and ... an apology.

However, in 'face saving cultures' (which include China and Japan) it is considered a punishment to have to apologise.

Although an apology is not stated as a remedy in the Chinese Trademark Law, it is in article 46 of the Chinese Copyright Law, which shows that apologies have found their place in Chinese IP law as a remedy.

Read Mr Atkins article here.

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