Both the United States and the UK just recently concluded a week of activities on IP issues.  Here’s a summary of the UK activities:

Baroness Neville-Rolfe,  the UK Minister for IP, led a large delegation and series of activities that covered 8 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Chongqing and Hong Kong) in 4 days. The delegation attended the 2nd UK-China IP Symposium in Beijing, which was attended by 180 companies from the UK and China, as well as a High Court judge, and officials from the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO).  SIPO Commissioner Shen Changyu opened the Beijing program.

The speech by Baroness Neville Rolfe is worth reading. It emphasizes some of the science and technological cooperation between China and the UK, including scientific citations and the Newton Fund for further developing science and technological cooperation. The speech also talks about joint criminal enforcement and other cooperative efforts, as well as how “good collective licensing can contribute hundreds of millions to the economies of both the UK and China.”  Minister Rolfe also highlighted four areas where UK businesses thought that worked well in China: border detentions by China Customs; sophisticated judgments in the Chinese courts; enforcement of IP rights at trade fairs in China and the transparency and openness to stakeholder input during recent legislative reforms

Agreements were also signed, including between the China Britain Business Council with Alibaba Group, covering IP protection on the Alibaba and Taobao sites, and between the UK Copyright Licensing Agency and the China Written Works Copyright Society on collective licensing cooperation.

The program also included extensive government to government meetings at the central and provincial/municipal level, including a bilateral with State Councillor Wang Yong which made the CCTV1 evening news.

Follow these links to the UK government news report, and to the British Chamber news report.

Last week, the United States hosted the bilateral JCCT IPR Working Group in Washington, DC.  The Ministry of Commerce also hosted a bilateral cooperation forum.  More on the forum in my next blog.

Thanks to Tom Duke, the UK’s IP Attache in Beijing for pointing out these UK activities to me!