International Law

?A new dawn for the China health-care or? Grand theft IP??

Posted on April 19, 2009
Guest article by Miko?aj RogowskiBack in January, Chinese government announced another one of its subsidies. This time around public health-care is the target and a sum of $128 billion is the weapon. It is no secret that it is another of Beijing?s measures of calming the nation during the year of the economic slow down, however anyone who has been in a public hospital in China will tell you that the system is indeed in need of the equipment and drugs that can be bought with such a substantial sum...

Green Gold Rush: The Interview, The Movie

Posted on April 19, 2009
Laurent Gaberelle told me that he made a video documentary called Green Gold Rush about bioprospecting (the exploration of biodiversity for commercially valuable genetic and bio-chemical resources) and indigenous peoples. See the video here.The InterviewIP Dragon: Is traditional knowledge what the developed world wanted to give (as some would say "small change") to the developing world in exchange for their enforcement of the economically more important intellectual property rights of copyrights, trademarks and patents?Laurent Gaberelle: "The rhetoric of biopiracy has emerged as a political discourse and strategy to counter the piracy rhetoric that MNCs used to justify the enforcement of stronger and stronger intellectual property rights in the geopolitical South...

IP Dragon's Worldwide Review of Seizures and Measures Against Counterfeit and Pirated Goods Originating from China

Posted on April 17, 2009
This article will be a work in process, because everytime I will come across news about a country that seized counterfeit or pirated goods originating from China I will add the link, so that a worldwide overview will emerge. If you find articles about activities against infringed goods from China in exotic places (or if such a countery has any link with infringement originating from China), feel free to send me the links...

Consumers International Says UK Has Worse Copyright Regime Than China... Nonsense Says Sharkey

Posted on April 17, 2009
Thank goodness it is Friday. Consumers International did a survey on the intellectual property laws and enforcement practices of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, the UK and the US, see here...

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Music Copyright Fees for Television and Radio Announced

Posted on April 17, 2009
Picture: TV History JLM Pacific Epoch (China Business Headlines & Analysis from JL McGregor & Company) translated a report by West China City Daily quoting Chinese composer Xu Peidong that China's National Publishing Administration plans to set up copyright fees of 2...

Zhongnanhai Cigarettes? White House Cigars? Kremlin Wodka?

Posted on April 16, 2009
Xin Dingding and Wang Huazhong report on an anti-tobacco non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Think Tank Research Center for Health Development, that submitted a petition on April 14, 2009 to the Beijing Trademark Office to stop the use of Zhongnanhai, the complex of buildings in Beijing which serves as the central headquarters of the Communist Party of China, as a trademark for ...

Do ACTA Member Countries Want to Confront China With A Fait Accompli?

Posted on April 16, 2009
Since April 9, when I blogged 'China and ACTA: Why the problem is not made part of the solution', new information about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has leaked, see Wikileaks here. It makes you realise how transparent the founding parties to ACTA want to be...

Silk Market Vendors of Counterfeit Goods Terrorise Law Firm

Posted on April 10, 2009
Remember the Silk Market Appeal Case/Landlord Case about which I blogged at the exact same date, but then in 2006? Read here. Well, a lot has happened in the mean time:The Beijing Silk Market (before known as Silk Street or Silk Alley) vendors of counterfeit Burberry, Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Prada products, have again overstepped the boundaries of accepted behaviour...

Faustian Pact Anno 2009: Receive Counterfeit Products, Lose Your Soul

Posted on April 10, 2009
You might have seen the movie 'The Devil Wears Prada'. A more empirical title could be 'The Devil Sells fake Prada'. Research conducted by Duke and MIT professor Dan Ariely (author of Predictably Irrational) found out that owning a counterfeit product significantly corrupts your morality...

China and ACTA: Why Is The Problem Not Made Part Of The Solution?

Posted on April 09, 2009
Medio December 2008 IP Dragon wrote about the controversial genesis of the China-less Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) by Japan and the US (joined by Australia, Canada, the European Union, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore and Switzerland) whose goal it is to stem the tide of counterfeit and pirated goods that originate for the lion share from China, read here...

Sweet US ITC Victory Over Sucralose Patents For Chinese Manufacturers

Posted on April 09, 2009
Complainants:Tate & Lyle Technology Limited of London, United Kingdom;Tate & Lyle Sucralose, Inc. of Decatur, IL.Versus Respondents:AIDP, Inc. of City of Industry, CA; Beijing Forbest Chemical Co., Ltd. of China;Beijing Forbest Trade Co., Ltd...

Center Stage for Background Music: Collective Society Victorious Against Supermarket

Posted on April 08, 2009
Mena Lo and Lilian Shi of Wilkinson & Grist China wrote a short article about a copyright infringement case the Music Copyright Society of China brought against Beijing MerryMart Chain Stores.The Beijing Haidian District People's Court awarded only 500 Renminbi damages...

Giving Away Music For Free to Destroy Copyright Piracy: Operation Success, Patient Dead?

Posted on April 06, 2009
Google is trying to get a bit closer to Baidu, the number one search engine in China. Therefore it is offering the users of google.cn free music downloads. It is legal, because all copyright holders have given permission. Murad Ahmed of the Times Online wrote: "The service is supported by 140 record labels, including the big four (Warner Music, Universal, EMO, Sony BMG), and will earn revenue from advertising on pages that let Chinese web users download or stream licensed music ? 350,000 tracks are already available, with plans to have more than a million tracks within a few months...

Guidelines of the Supreme People's Court on Implementing the National IP Strategy

Posted on April 06, 2009
Last year China's State Council promulgated the National IP Strategy ("National IP Strategy 2008: Feasible Commitments or Road to Nowhere Paved with Good Intentions" read here), a roadmap that must lead China to become one of the most innovative countries by 2020...

IPR Enforcement in China via Inversed Trojan Horse: LVMH Invites China Investment Corporation to Take An Equity Stake

Posted on April 05, 2009
March 16, Tim LeeMaster wrote for the South China Morning Post, the English language newspaper of Hong Kong, that China Investment Corporation is considering to take an equity stake of 10 percent in the French luxury goods company LVMH. Head tip to the China Economic Review, read here...

How to Protect Traditional Chinese Medicine?

Posted on April 01, 2009
Recently I have been corresponding about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and which intellectual property rights (IPR) can protect them. I just read Mr or Ms Jia's interesting paper on TCM (Jia Q., The World Health Organization, 'Traditional Chinese Medicine Could Make "Health for One" [Come] True', 2006) which includes a very interesting chapter on intellectual property rights: 4...

Professor Lessig Went To Beijing to Warn China Against ...

Posted on March 29, 2009
... US copyright policyMr Brett Gaylor, a Canadian from Montreal wrote and directed a thought provoking documentary 'RIP: A Remix Manifesto', which can be seen in 13 chapters via the internet, see here, which is an open invitation to remix it. The movie criticises copyright laws and intellectual property laws in general that constrain creativity instead of stimulate it...

Neither US Nor China Appeals Against WS/DS362 report

Posted on March 24, 2009
Ms Kaitlin Mara has an excellent post on Intellectual Property Watch about the acceptance of and reactions to the WTO Dispute Settlement Report (WS/DS362) by the US and China. China is expected to tell how it will implement the changes that are prescribed by the report...

Video Copyright Piracy Enforcement in China Comes of Age

Posted on March 24, 2009
Andy Greenberg wrote two great articles for Forbes about video copyright piracy in China.In 'Video Piracy's China Syndrome' he writes that "[a]ccording to date from copyright-fingerprinting start-up Vobile, the number of copyright-infringing videos on some Chinese sites like Ku6 and Youku has jumped more than six-fold between September 2007 and September 2008 [...

Interview with Mr Joseph Simone About Which Steps The US Could Take in regard to IPR in China

Posted on March 19, 2009
IP Dragon's Danny Friedmann asked foreign registered lawyer and IPR in China specialist Mr Joseph Simone of Baker & McKenzie in Hong Kong about which course of action the US could take after the decision, WTO DS 362 Report, by the dispute settlement panel on United States? complaint against ?China ? Measures affecting the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights...

The Future of Innovation in China: "China Will Overtake Position Germany in 20 years" Or "Not in Our Life Time"

Posted on March 19, 2009
I just listened to the IP Think Tank Podcast of February 16, 2009 which is an initiative of Duncan Bucknell Company. Besides an interesting review of the WTO report on DS 362, the IP Think Tank Podcast has a lot to offer to any IPR enthusiast. At the end, Mr Nicholas Redfearn, Rouse country manager in Hong Kong, told about two recent books that convey two diametrical opposite views of China's path to patent and innovation growth (the assumption implied is that there is a strong correlation between the growth of patents and innovation in a country)...

How to Sanction Lack of IPR Enforcement in China: Priority Watch List (IILA) or Foreign Country/Section 306 Monitoring Status (IACC)

Posted on March 18, 2009
The International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC) is an organisation that represents companies concerned with trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy. The IACC submitted the following recommendations to the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) in their annual Special 301 review of intellectual property protection issues in foreign countries...

81.5 percent of Counterfeit Products in Japan originates from China

Posted on March 16, 2009
The Japan Times is running (and has probably translated) Kyodo News' article about Japan's Finance Ministry that stated that 81.5 percent of counterfeit products come from China.Japan's 9 customs housed handled 26,415 cases of fake imported goods in 2008, up 16...

Multinationals Strengthen Their Commitment to China; But Are Scared By IPR Challenges

Posted on March 11, 2009
Booz & Company conducted a study (survey under 108 foreign invested manufacturing companies) together with the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai to see what the influence is of the economic crisis on their commitment of doing business in China...

AMP: "Economic Crisis Should Make German Government Act More Agressively Against Counterfeiters"

Posted on March 09, 2009
Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) interviewed Rüdiger Stihl, chairman of the Aktionskreises gegen Produkt- und Markenpiraterie (APM). The resulting article at the site of N24 (in German) gives a good overview of the damages that are caused by counterfeit products originating from China (for 75 percent) and Turkey (10 percent) and the measures that APM is proposing...

Portrait Rights In China: When They Say Cheese, You Say See You In Court

Posted on March 03, 2009

Why STAs are Different From EPAs/FTAs and Influencing IPR norms is Preferable to Being Influenced

Posted on March 03, 2009

Why Intellectual Property Rights In China Don't Come Naturally

Posted on February 24, 2009
I was delighted to receive the learned paper of Charles R. Stone, published in the Marquette Law Review, Vol. 92, p. 199, 2008. It is called 'What Plagiarism Was Not: Some Preliminary Observations on Classical Chinese Attitudes toward what the West Calls Intellectual Property'...

Chinese Counterfeit Products Distort Sub-Saharan Market

Posted on February 23, 2009
Great 2008 article by David Rocks and Alex Halperin for BusinessWeek. They write that the manufacturers of low cost high volume products such as shoe polish, ball pens and tooth brushes in African countries, such as Uganda, meet a lot of IPR challenges originating from China...

MOU on IPR Between Philippines and Taiwan

Posted on February 23, 2009
Taiwan and the Philippines try to develop a so called Subic-Clark-Kaohsiung Corridor. Taiwan is located north of the Philippines, with the Taiwanese city Kaohsiung in the South. Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway is the longest toll expressway of the Philippines...

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