What Is the Superlative of Contributory Liability?... Local State Supervision Liability?

Managing IP magazine, had a link to an interesting China Daily article, see here in which a State Administration for Radio Film and Television (SARFT) official was quoted as saying that it is "working on the establishment of an internet audio-visual programs industry association (..)". The application has been submitted and it now waiting approval to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Also interesting in the article is that the government intensified supervision over major internet enterprises, a precautionary move to stop piracy spreading. "In 2009, the number websites being supervised by local copyright authorities, reached 3,029. They include Taobao.com, Baidu, Sohu and Youku."

That means that if infringement still took place in that period, it was under local copyright supervision.

Taobao is China's e-commerce platform. And where eBay is sued by trademark holders in the U.S. (Tiffany), France (Hermès and LVHM) and Belgium (Lancôme), in China Taobao was sued for example by Puma; read Lee, Won Hee Elaine. 'Online Auction Sites and Inconsistencies: A Case Study of France, China, and the United States.' American University Intellectual Property Brief, Spring 2010, 50-57, here.

Jesse London (who is the managing editor of Cornell Journal of International Law), wrote an interesting note on China's Approaches to Intellectual Property Infringement on the Internet for the Internet Journal of Rutgers School of Law, volume 38, 2010-2011, read here. Mr London is comparing the IFPI cases against Baidu and Yahoo China and comes to the conclusion that the degree of good faith of the online service provider is crucial, but so is the degree of reasonableness of the demands of the trademark holder by insisting in the measures against infringement.

Youku (the Chinese equivalent of YouTube) had a lot of pirated Hollywood movies. But I checked a few times and they indeed seem to have cleaned up a lot of copyright piracy.

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100 Percent Australian made UGG Boots From China

Instead of the near undetectable counterfeit eggs, some counterfeit products are easier to determine. See the video, where counterfeiters made some mistakes, here.

The buyer of the fake boots was lured into buying the booths because it said: "100 percent Australian made". And the label said "Made in New Zealand" (see picture). That information was wrong, because as the eBay Guide 'How to tell fake UGG booths' tells you real UGG Australia booths are made in China too.

At the UGG Australia site you can fill in a URL at a search bar to see whether UGG Australia can guarantee that the products sold from that place are genuine, see here. That does not solve the problem for parallel import or discounts via other sites.

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SOSFakeFlash Cannot Forget: "Fighting Toward A Fake Flash Drive Free World"

SOSFakeFlash, is an interesting initiative. It is a site fighting "Toward a Fake Flash Drive Free World - No More Counterfeits - No More Data Loss" where people can report vendors of fake flash USB drives and MP players.
For example according to SOSFakeFlash liaoqin_25688, registered in China, is an eBay seller of counterfeit Flash USB drives and MP players. So eBay buyers are warned. Of course liaoqin_25688 can start under another name again. The real solution seems to be in a real name validation system.

"Over one milion flash memory chips are reprogrammed every month to lie about their actual capacity."

"As much as financial help is desperately needed for the project - sorry we will not accept or take nay funds from sellers to be on the list [of safe sellers]. The issue is integrity and ethics. Many of us come from an era where those two qualities MATTER! That generation can not be "bought"!

Read more here and the Global Report eBay Fake Memory 2008-2009, here.

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First conviction For Copyright Infringement Under The HK Organized And Serious Crime Ordinance

EarthTime writes that the South China Morning Post has reported about a counterfeiter named Yung Chun-pong, who possessed and sold pirated DVDs to overseas buyers through the eBay online auction site has been jailed for three-and-a-half year in Hong Kong.

"Yung, described by the judge as an "intelligent culprit," used legitimate companies, such as FedEx, to send the pirated discs overseas after packaging them, the South China Morning Post reported."

Read the EarthTime article here.

According to the South China Morning Post it was the first time someone got convicted for copyright infringement under the Organized and Serious Crime Ordinance.

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