Smartphone Patent War 2012: Chinese Alliance vs International Brands

The battlefield of patents are more and more the place where competitors are vying for market share. China has become the world's largest market for smart phones in the third quarter of 2011, according to Strategy Analytics. Some Chinese smartphone makers, including Lenovo, ZTE, TCL, Coolpad and Konka joined forces to protect themselves against the rising number of claims of patent infringement by international smartphone manufacturers, such as Apple, Nokia and Microsoft, and to dominate China's domestic market.
Huawei has around 65,000 patents and also ZTE has a substantial number of patents for wireless communication technologies. According to Erica Yen and Steve Shen of Digitimes many Chinese smart phone makers develop localized interfaces and even operation systems, see here.

Chinese smartphone manufacturers also launch their products via China-based telecom carriers and social networking websites operators, via dual branding. HTC and Sony Ericsson grew rapidly because their Android models were popular in major cities of east and south China, according to Linda Sui of Strategy Analytics. If China Telecom will launch the CDMA iPhone 4S early next year, Ms Sui expects Apple's market share to peak. Globally Nokia is still number one, closely followed by Samsung and Apple.

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CNTV (CCTV) Sues China Telecom For Copyright Infringement

Geng Wenxin of Global Times, a state owned news organisation, reports about CNTV (China Network Television) part of CCTV (China Central Television) suing two provincial branches of China Telecom for using its copyrighted content without permission.

• China Telecom at the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court (Guangdong province)
• China Telecom at the Nanjing Intermediate People's Court (Jiangsu province)

There are four nationwide IPTV license owners that are competing with each other. They have licenses and content, but no networks and users. Telecom operators own those resources, so they have to cooperate.

Read more here.

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Copyright Piracy in China: China Did Not Shed Its Fetish For Temporary Mass Campaigns

Blacklisting until the blacklisting goes on black again...

The National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC) has started a campaign on July 21, which will last until the end of October, to blacklist websites that are found to contain pirated content.

According to IPR Focus, who run the People's Daily Online article, the action was announced jointly by the National Copyright Administration, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Read here.

It seems that in regard to intellectual property rights (IPR) enforcement China did not lose its fetisch for temporary mass campaigns. We have seen these kind of campaigns over and over (see page 74 of my thesis Paper Tiger or Roaring Dragon). And the only thing that is missing is a nice poetic name.

The procedure to put the names on the website of the NCAC, so China's three telecom operators (China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile) can take them offline evokes questions. Do the websites get the chance to take down the pirated content first? What is wrong with a more durable solution to obligate websites to take down pirated content, and if they don't and the content is confirmed pirated by the NCAC, to let one of the telecom operators take the website offline.

Unsurprisingly the crack down will also focus on all content related to the Shanghai Expo and Guangzhou Asian Games. "Anyone who reports cases of infringement and piracy will get reward betwen 1,000 and 10,000 yuan." I guess the latter measure is only focused to enforce the IPR of these public events. Instead of spending the money on informers, the NCAC could enforce themselves or spend it on campaigns that should raise the awareness about IPR in general. China should know by now that there is more IPR to protect and enforce than the IPR of the Beijing Olympic Games, Shanghai World Expo and Guangzhou Asian Games.

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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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