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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Cost of Piracy Overestimated Says OECD, Underestimated Says ICC

Steve Whitehouse of Thomson Financial reports about an unpublished Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study which puts trade losses in 2005 at up to 200 billion US dollar, considerably lower than the 600 billion US dollars estimated by the International Chamber of Commerce. Read Whitehouse's article via Forbes.com here.

US officials estimate the costs for companies [1] around the globe. of China’s counterfeit and piracy exports as between US $ 50 [2] and 60 billion [3] a year.

However, objective statistics about IP in China are a great challenge for scholars. That's why IP Dragon proposed to use the Enforcement/Infringement ratio, for it does not give absolute figures, but at least gives an indication of whether the situation improves or deteriorates, read more here.

China is not the only one to blame for its lack of transparency. Trade associations and lobby groups have their own agenda. Some argue that Business Software Alliance has misrepresented the facts [4] or that Motion Picture Association of America claims a right to misrepresent the facts [5].

Notes:
[1] This excludes the lost tax revenues for governments, lost employment, and extra costs for health and safety.
[2] “U.S. officials say its exports cost legitimate producers worldwide up to $50 billion a year in lost potential sales,” Associated Press, ‘China’s piracy hurting its own industries’, July 7, 2006, available at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13617619.
[3] “International companies are losing more than $60 billion a year because of piracy in China, according to the U.S. government,” ‘U.S., EU to Fight Counterfeits From China, Russia’, Bloomberg, June 19, 2006, available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000100&sid=aTSjqiimKzYc&refer=germany.
[4] “BSA or just BS”, Economist, May 19, 2005, available at: http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_PJJPQNS.
[5] Ryan Singel, “Copyright Groups Continue Fight Against Anti-Lying and Spying Bill-Updated”, Wired Thread Level, April 11, 2007, available at: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/04/copyright_group.html.

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International Chamber of Commerce Survey: "China Has Least Favourable IP Environment"

"The first annual BASCAP Global Survey on Counterfeiting and Piracy was conducted by ICC’s Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP) initiative, in cooperation with the Cass Business School, part of City University, London. The survey polled 48 companies, many of which operate globally, spanning 27 product categories."

Read the full results of the survey here.

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