For the past few years, I have been conducting moot court simulations of DS/362, the WTO US-China IPR “enforcement case” with students and colleagues at Fordham University and elsewhere. The heart of DS/362 was the US’s argument that, by establishing prosecution and conviction thresholds that were too high, China did not provide an adequate criminal remedy to address commercial scale counterfeiting and piracy. The WTO panel determined that the United States had not made out an adequate case that China did not, in fact, provide such protection. The U.S. argued that China had not complied with an earlier request, under “Article 63” of the TRIPS Agreement, to provide additional data (including cases) about its IPR enforcement system that would have been germane to the case, while the panel believed that such data would not have been difficult to obtain. Continue reading
Category Archives: China IPR
SIPO announces Annual Strategy and Plans of Implementation for Intellectual Property in 2012
April 26 is International IP day, and in anticipation of the day, Chinese state agencies are announcing plans for intellectual property, releasing statistics, and holding conferences. The activities during this month are key to analyzing the past year’s performance, and to understand those areas where China will be placing a special emphasis for this year. Continue reading
Official announcement of the FCBA Bench and Bar Program in Beijing
Chief Judge Rader with Renmin U Prof Liu Chuntian.
The Federal Circuit Bar has just posted the formal announcement of its Bench and Bar program with the China Law Society, which will be hosted at Renmin University May 28-30, with the the support of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the Supreme People’s Court of China, the US Patent and Trademark Office and the State Intellectual Property Office, amongst others. Continue reading
Russia and China Conclude a Patent Prosecution Highway
After a bilateral meeting between China State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and Russia Federal Intellectual Property Office (FIPO), China and Russia concluded a Memorandum of Understanding on Patent Prosecution Highway between the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federal Intellectual Property Office. [detail information in Chinese]
The Russian office has now become the fifth national IP office to conclude a patent prosecution highway with China SIPO (the others are Japan, the USA, Germany and Korea). According to the Memorandum of Understanding, the pilot project will begin on July. 1st 2012, and will last for 1 year. The rapid growth in PPH’s, including this intra-BRIC PPH, is startling considering prior Chinese concerns that PPH’s and other methods of burden sharing might adversely implicate China’s “patent sovereignty.”
Understanding China’s New Environment for Intellectual Property
After months of planning and preparation, Fordham’s first China focused IP Conference is only two short days away! Registration has been climbing in the last few days, and it is still open.
With the range of issues covered and many notable featured speakers from the U.S. and Chinese government and judiciary, academia and practitioners, the program promises to be exciting. As April 11th approaches, the speaker biographies and their papers have been posted online as well.
We look forward to learning about these issues from the distinguished panel and their varied perspectives.
