Major acts in recent days (07-09-10)

Sino-German IPR dialog

China and Germany agreed to list protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) as an important topic in bilateral dialog during a meeting between Premier Wen Jiabao and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on August 27.

It was Merkel's second visit to China since she took office less than two years ago.

"IPR protection is not just an issue between nations but also a requirement for China's own development," Wen said, adding that the government will intensify legal enforcement to punish violators.

Merkel said she believes China has set up a sound legal base for IPR protection.

Pirated movies



A CD and DVD retailer inBeijing was ordered to pay 192,000 yuan to six US movie makers, including 20th Century Fox and Universal City Studios, for selling pirated DVDs.

The six companies sued Beijing Yongsheng Century International Culture Co Ltd in district court in Beijing and asked the defendant to stop selling pirated DVDs, make a public apology to copyright owners and pay compensation.

The court ruled that the Beijing firm failed to provide proper copyright certificates of DVDs it sold and infringed on copyrights of the six movie companies, so the firm was ordered to pay 192,000 yuan in compensation.

The court did not support the demand from the plaintiffs for a public apology because, while the infringement caused financial losses, it did not damage the plaintiffs' images, the court said.

Top global IP leaders

Vice-Premier Wu Yi was selected as one of the 50 Most Influential People in Intellectual Property (IP) by the UK magazine Managing IP for the fourth time. Tian Lipu, commissioner of the State IP Office (SIPO), was also on the list for a second time.

Managing IP has published the list annually since 2003, ranking global leaders in IP administration, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, senior officials from the World Intellectual Property Organization, the World Health Organization, judges, congressmen and IP officials in the US, UK, Japan, South Korea and India, as well executives from IBM, Microsoft and Google.

Jack Chang, senior IP lawyer for GE in Asia and head of the Quality Brands Protection Committee of the Chinese Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment, which aims to protect foreign companies' IPs in China, also joined the list for the second consecutive year.

Information industry patents

The Ministry of Information Industry released its ninth information technology patent analysis on August 27, which showed patent applications in the information industry have grown at an annual average of 23.67 percent from 2000, compared to the overall national average of 18.11 percent.

More than 30 percent of invention and utility design patent applications came from the information industry, while the proportion in invention patents was even higher at 42 percent.

Almost 1,400 designs were registered for integrated circuit designs, 81 percent of which were filed by local copyright owners. Shanghai had the largest number of applications with almost 500 designs.

Lou Qinjian, vice-minister of information industry, said at a summit on the release of the report that his ministry will continue to research and work to draft information industry IP strategies and encourage enterprises to take the lead in standardization. It will establish an IP alert system to give Chinese companies a guideline on overseas expansion.

An information technology patent database is also planned, which will be based in Zhangjiang, a hi-tech park in Shanghai.

Shenzhen innovations

SIPO Commissioner Tian Lipu gave a lecture to Shenzhen government officials on August 29 encouraging Shenzhen to continue to play a leading role in generating IPs in the country.

Shenzhen, one of China's four Special Economic Zones, has been emphasizing the creation and protection of IPs. Last year, eight of the top-15 invention patent filers were from Shenzhen, including telecom equipment giants Huawei and ZTE.

Tian said what was more important is that businesses have been taking the lead: enterprises, not State-owned universities or research institutes, accounted for 90 percent of the city's total research and development (R&D) spending, generating 90 percent of patents in the city.

Tian urged the Shenzhen municipal government to further encourage enterprises to innovate, protect innovations and pay attention to the supply of talent in R&D and patent work.

Protecting rights at exhibitions

Beijing Intellectual Property Office and the Legal Affairs Office of the Beijing municipal government held a conference with experts and business representatives to hear their opinions on the draft of Beijing's IP protection measures to protect rights at exhibitious.

Six officials from the central government and the China Chamber for the Promotion of International Trade, one of the largest exhibit organizers, nine other exhibition organizers and 10 representatives from foreign and domestic companies participated in the conference.

Trade organizations representing US, European, and Japanese companies said they would collect opinions from their member companies and provide feedback to the Beijing municipal government.

Beijing, like many other Chinese cities, has made increasing efforts to protect intellectual property during exhibitions, including an infringement complaint office on site at many exhibitions.

Analyzing applications

SIPO recently released the first analysis on non-service applications in the nation. Service applications, referring to patent applications not related with applicants' jobs, accounted for more than a half of total patent applications in China.

In the past two decades, a total of 1.84 million non-service patent applications were filed, compared with the total applications of 3.6 million from 1985 to the end of the first half of this year.

Almost 99 percent of the non-service applications were made by Chinese individuals. Non-service applicants were more active in utility designs, contributing to two-thirds of the total, while in the category of invention patents, non-service applications only accounted for one-third. In design applications, the breakdown of non-service to service applications was a ratio of 50 percent each.

Defending writers



The Anti-piracy Subcommittee of Copyright Society of China and Chineseall.com, a digital library operator that assists in fighting online piracy, launched a campaign on August 31 in Beijing to help writers who have been victims of intellectual piracy.

The campaign aims to recruit 100 famous writers who have been damaged and want to defend their rights.

The two organizations will assist them to hire lawyers, accept copyright owners' trust to investigate piracy of books and take legal actions in representing the writers.