China-US IP and Anti-dumping Symposium kicks off in Beijing

Themed with Legal Practice of IPR Protection and Anti-Dumping in the Globalization of Sci-Tech Innovation, a high-level China and US symposium recently kicked off in Beijing. More than 200 representatives, including Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the U.S. Federal Circuit Mr. Randall Ray Rader, Administrative Law Judge Mr. Theodore R. Essex from the International Trade Commission and Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal in federal court in San Jose who heard the well-known patent dispute between Apple and Samsung, were attracted to share their views at the meeting.

Nowadays, cases involving Chinese enterprises have topped all the anti-dumping cases received by the United States, while intellectual property issues have also become the biggest challenge in China-US trade relationship. This year has seen a significant increase of both kinds of conflicts mentioned above, revealed by statistics by the end of October.

825 "Section 337 Investigations" have been initiated by 2011, said Professor Zhang Ping from Peking University, adding that the investigations involved 65 countries and regions, but most of which were in the area of Greater China.

According to Zhang, "Section 337 Investigation" is institutionally defective. Only the accused in less than one third of such investigations were found to have actually committed infringement, shown by statistics, with cases ended with non-infringement findings, settlements and withdrawal by the complainants respectively took up 18.24%, 39.36% and 7.7%. In other word, the accused in a considerable amount of disputes finally won the cases or at least walked away from accusation, he noted. If this continues to be the case, "Section 337 Investigation" might be misused by the complainants, especially given the inadequate right in defense provided by the regulation itself, and thus results in a lot of goods trapped in investigation, which in practice has become the first barrier of their entry to the U.S. market.

Mr. Li Xie from the Bureau of Domestic Trade of China's Ministry of Commerce (Mofcom) commented that Chinese enterprises' involvement in "Section 337 Investigation" is actually in relation to the country's booming trend of industrial upgrading, and thus is a prominent feature in the current trading stage. In the past ten years, export goods have gradually gained more value-added due to the industry upgrading and optimizing process, but as export surges, domestic enterprises turn to face greater pressure in competition, for their foreign competitors will take all kinds of measures to protect their interests: they might set price restrictions at the beginning, such as to claim themselves victim of dumping, and later issue limitations on subsidizing policies, Li said. As the effect of those two measures fades and the competitiveness of high-value added products increases, IP disputes will gradually arise. "It is a normal phenomenon," he noted, urging the public to treat it in a positive way. "Japan, South Korea and even our Taiwan Province have all encountered the same problem and were all once subject to 'Section 337 Investigation'."

 [Chinese version is available on people.com.cn]