New draft copyright law raises compensation
Apr-28-2020 By : fcccadmin
Experts on intellectual property rights protection applauded increased compensation for copyright infringements in a newly released draft law, viewing it as a bigger threat to copycats and a stronger tool to fight piracy. In the draft revision to the Chinese Copyright Law, if a copyright owner clarifies the cost of using his or her works, people using the works without paying or those deliberately infringing on the copyright will be ordered to pay five times the cost in compensation, the China Daily reports. Meanwhile, the ceiling for compensation that pirates will face has been increased to CNY5 million in the draft – up from CNY500,000 – when the cost of infringing on a copyright is not clear or when the loss to copyright holders and benefits gained by violators cannot be determined. The draft was submitted on April 26 to the bimonthly session of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) for a first of three readings before being adopted. “Raising the compensation as a heavier punishment will be effective in deterring copycats, especially those in cyberspace, as it’s easier to plagiarize works online and the infringement cost is also much lower than it is in traditional ways,” Liu Bin, an IP lawyer from Beijing Zhongwen Law Firm, said.
He gave a thumbs-up to the CNY5 million for undetermined damages in the draft, adding that the current CNY500,000 compensation is not a large amount of money for copyright violators compared with their illicit gains. Liu Junhai, Law Professor at Renmin University of China said “the key to copyright protection is to make sure the penalty is higher than the gains from violations”. Besides the harsher punishment, the draft has added protection for new types of works in the internet era, including short videos, live-streaming and online dramas, “which I think is urgent and essential,” said Kang Lixia, a lawyer specializing in IP-related disputes at the Beijing Conzen Law Firm. Copyright cases have made up about 60% of IP-related disputes in recent years. The Copyright Law was put into effect in 1991 and amended in 2001 and 2010.
The Chinese Patent Law, which is still being reviewed, will also raise compensation to a range of CNY100,000 to CNY5 million when the loss to patent holders and the benefits gained by infringers cannot be determined. The current range is CNY10,000 to CNY1 million, the China Daily reports.
In related copyright news, Shanghai’s market watchdog imposed administrative penalties on seven trademark applicants and four trademark application agencies for preemptive trademark registrations related to the coronavirus epidemic. The applicants applied for trademark registrations of Huoshenshan Hospital, Leishenshan Hospital and Dr Li Wenliang, which infringes others’ rights and violates China’s trademark law and related regulations, the Shanghai Administration for Market Regulation said. The seven applicants, including Shanghai Tubo Internet Science and Technology Co and Shanghai Diqi New Material Science and Technology Co would be fined CNY10,000 each. The four agencies, including the Shanghai Jiacheng Trademark Agency and Shanghai Jinshan Trademark Agency, would be fined up to CNY85,000 for violating China’s trademark law.
The parties filed trademark applications although they were aware that it was a malicious registration, the Administration said. Huoshenshan and Leishenshan are the names of makeshift hospitals built in Wuhan, the city hit hardest by the epidemic in Hubei province, to treat Covid-19 patients. Both have ceased operation as the epidemic wanes within the country. Dr Li Wenliang is known as one of the first whistle-blowers who warned the public of the coronavirus and later died of the disease. Li is widely known in China, while the two hospitals were registered as public institutions on January 27. These have prior rights to these names, said Pan Lei, an Administration official. The Shanghai Intellectual Property Administration has ordered the four agencies to withdraw their applications. Heads of the companies and agencies involved will face punishments as well, the Shanghai Daily reports.
China overtakes the U.S. in international patent filings
Apr-14-2020 By : fcccadmin
China last year became the world leader in international patent filings, unseating the United States which had held the top spot for more than four decades, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said. A record 265,800 international patent applications were filed last year, up 5.2% from 2018. In the main category – the Patent Cooperation Treaty, or PCT – China topped the ranking for the first time, with 58,990 applications. It overtook the United States, which filed 57,840 applications, and which has led the PCT ranking since the system took effect in 1978. China and the U.S. were followed by Japan, Germany and South Korea as the world’s top patent application filers, WIPO said. “China’s rapid growth to become the top filer of international patent applications via WIPO underlines a long-term shift in innovation toward the East, with Asia-based applicants now accounting for more than half of all PCT applications,” WIPO Director General Francis Gurry said in a statement. Asian-based applicants accounted for 52.4% of all filings, while Europe and North America accounted for less than a quarter each.
For the third consecutive year, Huawei Technologies topped the global ranking in 2019 with 4,411 PCT applications, followed by Mitsubishi Electric Corp of Japan, which made 2,661 filings, Samsung Electronics of South Korea with 2,334 filings, and Qualcomm of the United States with 2,127. Francis Gurry, who is due to step down at the end of September after 12 years at the WIPO helm, said that back in 1999 the organization had received just 276 patent applications from China. Last year’s nearly 59,000 filings marked a “200-fold increase in only 20 years,” he said. Gurry added: “It is important to remember that innovation is not a zero-sum game. A net increase in global innovation means new drugs, communications technologies, and solutions for global challenges that benefit everyone, wherever they live. I am pleased that WIPO’s IP services are successfully helping foster innovation and spread it worldwide,” the Shanghai Daily reports.
Addressing a virtual news conference, Gurry said that China’s rapid emergence was “down to a very deliberate strategy on the part of Chinese leadership to advance innovation and to make the country a country whose economy operates at a higher level of value”. For a long time, China has been the factory of the world, “but we’ve seen that changed in recent years”, he said. “We’ve seen a deliberate strategy on the part of the Chinese leadership to promote innovation, to promote high-end, high-value industries,” he said. “It’s a very clear strategy and it is working. I would put it down to that broad movement toward becoming a higher-value economy.”
Among educational institutions, the University of California maintained its top ranking with 470 published applications in 2019. Tsinghua University (265) was second, followed by Shenzhen University (247), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (230), and South China University of Technology (164). According to WIPO’s 2019 report, a record 265,800 international patent applications were filed last year, an increase of 5.2% over 2018. “Last year was the best year we have experienced in the history of the organization,” Francis Gurry said, as reported by the China Daily.
Chinese Customs stops fake FIFA World Cup products
Jun-19-2018 By : fcccadmin
Chinese customs officers have stopped hundreds of thousands of fake FIFA World Cup products from leaving the country as counterfeiters tried to make money from the international sporting event. Counterfeit goods, mainly footballs and sports clothing, were seized by Customs in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Yiwu, the world’s biggest wholesale market, ahead of the start of the World Cup in Russia.
China News Service reported that Guangzhou Customs impounded more than 7,800 fake FIFA products, all from one manufacturer and destined for Tanzania. Huangpu Customs, also in Guangzhou, seized 4,500 World Cup-Adidas soccer shirts mixed with a shipment of unbranded shirts. In Shanghai, Customs officials have discovered more than 130,000 items that allegedly infringed on the intellectual property rights of the World Cup. In one major case, nearly 2,500 “Russia 2018” footballs made in Nanjing were seized in mid-April before they could be shipped to Columbia through Yangshan port in Shanghai.
Hundreds of knock-off footballs were also impounded in Yiwu, Zhejiang province, in what was the 12th Fifa IPR raid by Hangzhou Customs this year. The dozen cases netted roughly 32,000 counterfeits combined. World Cup-related products are among the bestsellers on Yiwugou.com, the Yiwu commodities market’s online platform. More than 100 million of the top four products, all small flags of finalists in the event, have been sold in the past month. Chinese companies are also spending big on the event, signing up as either partners, sponsors or regional supporters, including Wanda Group, Mengniu, Hisense and Vivo, the South China Morning Post reports.
EPO and SIPO sign new strategic partnership agreement
Nov-28-2017 By : fcccadmin
China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO) have signed a new comprehensive strategic partnership agreement on November 23 with the aim of strengthening cooperation between the two offices, providing better services for global intellectual property users and contributing to improvements in the world’s IP system. The partnership between the two offices evolved from a technical to a strategic one, EPO President Benoit Battistelli said in Beijing.
“SIPO and the EPO are equal partners sharing similar views and objectives for the development of the global IP system,” said Battistelli. These objectives include the highest quality and legal certainty for granted patents, efficient and informed use of the patent system, optimized resources deployment, improved efficiency of patent search and examination tools, and more interaction with users and the industry to provide more professional services, he said. “I’m very impressed by the progress that China has made in recent years and the quality of the granted patents in China,” Battistelli added.“Within a few years, SIPO has become a leading office in the world.”
SIPO, the EPO, the Japan Patent Office, the Korean Intellectual Property Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office – known as the IP5 in the industry – are the world’s five largest patent administrations, representing roughly 85% of global patent applications. More than 2,000 Chinese patent examiners and other related professionals have been trained at the EPO, and the EPO has helped SIPO use tools in patent search and examination. SIPO and the EPO have developed “common positions” in their joint effort to simplify and improve the patent granting procedure. One example is the Global Dossier, a public service that enables users to monitor via a single online source how a family of patent applications is progressing at the IP5 offices. EPO and SIPO have been the first two offices to implement the Global Dossier.
Last year, Chinese companies applied for 7,150 patents at the EPO, accounting for about 5% of the total applications and ranking No 6 among all origins. The number showed the strongest growth of 24.8% among the top 10 leading countries at the EPO, making China “the main driver of growth in applications at the EPO”, according to the office’s 2016 annual report. With 2,390 applications, Chinese IT giant Huawei moved two places ahead to become the second-largest patent applicant at the EPO last year, only after Philips. Also last year, Chinese companies were granted 2,513 patents from the EPO, up 78.7%, the China Daily reports.
The Unitary Patent system will be applied next year, making it possible to get patent protections in 26 European Union members by submitting a single request to the EPO. It will not only simplify patent granting procedures, but also cut the application costs by 70%.
China launches campaign to protect foreign intellectual property rights
Sep-26-2017 By : fcccadmin
China has launched a four-month campaign to protect the intellectual property rights (IPRs) of foreign businesses, a move that may alleviate a major concern among foreign investors and appease Washington ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing in November.
The Trump administration last month officially launched a probe into alleged Chinese intellectual property theft and the findings could lead to the U.S. imposing tariffs on Chinese products – potentially triggering a trade war between the economies. Steve Bannon, the former White House Chief Strategist, told the South China Morning Post in an interview in Hong Kong that Washington would release the results of the probe before a Sino-U.S. summit in Beijing so both sides can reset trade with “a whole series of negotiations”.
It is the first time the Chinese government has started a nationwide campaign to protect foreign businesses’ intellectual property. The drive, which runs from this month to the end of December, is designed to “create a level playground”, protect investors’ legitimate interests and “further increase foreign investment”, according to the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM). In addition to MOFCOM, another 12 Chinese government and judicial bodies, including the Ministry of Public Security and the Supreme Court, are taking part in the campaign to crack down on the theft of trade secrets, trademark infringement, patent violations and online property rights violations.
Each government department has been assigned its respective focus. The State Administration of Industry and Commerce is leading the efforts to protect foreign trademarks, while prosecutors give special attention to investigate any corruption or neglect of duty involved in intellectual property violations.
Some foreign hi-tech investors are wary of investing in China due to intellectual property rights issues. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China dropped 6.5% from a year earlier to USD72.1 billion in the first seven months of this year, the South China Morning Post reports.
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