Category Archives: AUCL

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CFDA’s New Policies to Promote IP and Innovation in the Phama Section

As noted previously in this blog, the death of patent linkage which had been heralded by draft Drug Registration Rules appears to be premature.  In fact, the China Food and Drug Administration has stated that it is interested in developing a more robust patent linkage system.  On May 12, 2017, the CFDA published a draft policy announcement soliciting public comment on developing a more  IP environment for innovative drugs, including more robust patent linkage and addressing other areas, such as data exclusivity.

Patent linkage provides a “linkage” between pharmaceutical regulatory approvals and patent infringement, whereby regulatory approval is denied until the relevant patent is expired or determined to be invalid or not infringed.  A linkage system for a country like China would provide greater stability in patent enforcement for both innovators and generics, by insuring that innovators are amply protected by their innovation, and generic companies are afforded opportunities to seek regulatory approval based on proof that a patent that might otherwise prevent their entry into market is invalid or not infringed by the generic companies’ product.  The US experience with Hatch Waxman, which established our patent linkage system is that it has, in the words of former USPTO Deputy Director Teresa Rea helped “ generics account[]for 75 percent of all prescribed drugs, saving consumers and society more than $1 trillion over the last 10 years”.

This draft policy also contemplates additional improvements on data exclusivity, protecting confidential information in its procedures and developing what appears to be an “Orange Book” type system for disclosing relevant patents, as well as the periods for data exclusivity in new pharmaceutical marketing approval applications.

Providing enhanced data exclusivity protection appears to be an effort to implement a 2012 JCCT commitment regarding what constitutes a “new chemical entity” for purposes of regulatory data protection.  Certain foreign countries, such as Chile, provide data exclusivity within a window of overseas product launch, which this draft appears to borrow from to the extent of a commensurate reduction of the period of data exclusivity based on delays in introducing novel pharmaceutical products beyond a one year window into China. The draft thereby forces the hand of innovators to introduce their product expeditiously into the Chinese market.

Additional protection of confidential information in government proceedings appear to be consistent with proposed amendments to China’s Anti Unfair Competition Law and JCCT commitments.   In addition, the enhanced protection for data exclusivity is also consistent with proposed changes in the AUCL that remove the “practical applicability” requirement which by law would deny trade secret protection to experimental failures.

The draft policy does not discuss how the courts might handle data exclusivity or infringement issues, including the role of patent administrative agencies, or other aspects related to determinations of infringement that affect marketing approvals. To fully implement these policies, changes would likely need to be made in a number of laws or regulations, as well as judicial practices.  As an example, China’s patent law made need to require that a request for marketing approval would need to constitute infringement of an innovator’s patents. It is also unclear to me what courts may have jurisdiction over these matters, and if there are administrative and/or civil remedies to be made available for the various obligations that these policies propose.

Attached is a  rough, draft translation of CFDA Bulletin No. 55.  Also attached is a translation by Allen & Overy.  Comments on this policy document are due by May 25 although the deadline for consultations is June 10.

All told, the draft shows an increased interest by CFDA in IP issues  in one of the most important markets in the world.  Nonetheless, as David Shen and Yijun Ge of Allen & Overy’s Shanghai office point out in their recent posting, another trend balanced against improved patent protection is generic consistency in pharmaceutical approvals.  This is also part of the drug approval reform which now mandates adherence to bioequivalence with an innovator’s approved drug, rather than previous procedures which required conformity to a national standard.  Thus, according to these authors, while an effective patent linkage system would strengthen overall patent protection, changes in bioequivalence requirements could also result in lowering the price of off-patent drugs through  different means.  As they point out: “most people believe that they [generics] will directly compete with off-patent drugs during the tendering process, without the current protection of “patented” status for the latter. “

In another development, exactly one week before this important CFDA policy document was released, the World Health Organization released its report  “ China Policies to Promote Local Production of Pharmaceutical Products and Protect Public Health” (May 5, 2017).  The IP chapter of this apparently unrelated report focuses on technology transfer (Bayh-Dole), genetic resources, compulsory licensing, data exclusivity, and the need to improve domestic patent policy.  The introduction views patents as efforts to “monopoliz[e]” medicine, rather than (in my view) of taking a more pro-competition stance of recognizing that patents provide incentives to innovation and not necessarily monopolies and policies such as patent linkage strike a balance between generics and innovative companies to insure stability and competition in the market place.   In this sense, the report does not appear to anticipate the important new CFDA policy discussed above.  The words “patent linkage” do not appear in the IP section of this report, although the report does reference in an introductory footnote the “Guiding Opinions for Promoting Healthy Development of the Pharmaceutical Industry” (March 11 2016) which has a goal that generics are launched for 90 percent of drugs with expired patents by 2020.  This could be read to infer that generics are not launched when infringement has been determined, such as according to these proposed CFDA linkage policies.   In addition, the report does not consider issues the importance of post filing supplementation of data for China’s innovative industries and the role of China’s innovative companies in promoting reforms that improve IP.

Please provide any comments or suggestions to improve the draft translation or these personal observations.

Updates: afternoon of May 14, 2017 and morning of May 17, 2017.

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GAI’s Comments on AUCL

Ahead of schedule, George Mason University’s Global Antitrust Institute (“GAI”) has prepared its comments on the NPC’s proposed revisions to the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, available here. 

GAI commended the National People’s Congress for deleting Article 6 on abuse of superior bargaining position and recommended that any provisions that relate to conduct covered by China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) be omitted entirely. GAI also strongly urged that Article 11 (which provides that “[b]usiness operators selling goods must not bundle the sale of goods against buyers’ wishes, and must not attach other unreasonable conditions”) be omitted in its entirety, as such conduct is already covered by Article 17(5) of the AML or at the very least, Article 11 should be revised to adopt an effects-based approach.

In my opinion, the argument that the AUCL shouldn’t duplicate the AML can also be said of other laws in China, notably the Technology Import / Export Regulations and Article 329 of the Contract Law regarding monopolization of technology.  Other laws, such as the Pricing Law also have a strong overlap with the AML, particularly as administered by NDRC. 

GAI’s comments on a prior State Council Legislative Affairs Office draft, along with the comments of the American Bar Association and American Intellectual Property Law Institute are available through this link.

I hope to post the comments of other organizations on the AUCL on this blog in the future. If you would like your organization’s comments to be considered for distributing here, please send your comments to me at: chinaipr@yahoo.com.

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Of Trade Secrets, Section 337, AUCL Reform and Evidence Production

When faced with trade secret misappropriation, the United States International Trade Commission can provide a forum for U.S. companies faced with unfair competition resulting from the misappropriation, even if the “theft” occurs entirely in China and/or a misappropriated process is used in China to manufacture a product imported into the United States.  In Certain Cast Steel Railway Wheels, Certain Processes for Manufacturing Or Relating To Same and Certain Products Containing Same, 337-TA-655, Amsted Industries Inc. which licensed certain confidential manufacturing technology to two Chinese companies, Datong ABC Castings Co. (DACC), and Xinyang Amsted Tonghe Wheels Company Limited (Tonghe), claimed the respondent, TianRui Group Co. Ltd, had poached employees from DACC and Tonghe and stolen from them materials and other proprietary information sufficient to establish an identical, competing manufacturing line.  The ITC found a violation of Section 337 and issued a ten-year exclusion order.  On appeal of this landmark case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the ITC has jurisdiction to reach trade secret misappropriation that occurs entirely abroad, so long as there is a nexus between the misappropriated trade secrets and the imported product.  Tianrui Group Co. v. ITC, 661 F.3d 1322, 1337 (Fed. Cir. 2011).  Interestingly, in that instance, the Chinese dometic authorities aligned with the United States.  Because railway wheels must be certified for use in China (as is the case in the U.S.), the Chinese Ministry of Railways declined to certify the Tianrui wheels until the U.S. matter was concluded.  The willingness of the Ministry of Railways to decertify Tianrui’s wheels while an ITC action was pending stands as an important contra-factual that suggests the relationship between trade secret theft in China and Chinese domestic industrial policy may be overstated.

More recently, in Certain Rubber Resins and Processes for Manufacturing Same, 337-TA-849, the ITC found a violation of Section 337 based on trade secret misappropriation that occurred entirely in China.  In that case, the Chinese authorities had ruled that there was no trade secret misappropriation in both civil and criminal proceedings.  In Sino Legend Chemical Co. v. International Trade Commission, 623 F. App’x 1016 (Fed. Cir. 2015), the respondents sought to overturn Tianrui, arguing that the ITC does not have jurisdiction to reach misappropriation taking place entirely abroad and that the ITC should have deferred to the Chinese authorities as a matter of comity.  In a nonprecedential judgment, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Commission’s finding.  On September 30, 2016, the respondent in the ITC case, Sino Legend, filed a petition for certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule TianRui, arguing that Section 337(a)(1)(A) contains no clear indication that it should apply extraterritorially and barring the importation of goods made using trade secrets misappropriated in China constitutes the impermissible regulation of conduct occurring overseas.  As an indication of how important this matter is to the Chinese government, in a rare filing, the Ministry of Commerce submitted an amicus brief supporting certiorari.  On January 9, 2017, the Supreme Court denied the certiorari petition.  Thus, U.S.-based companies can continue to turn to the ITC as a viable alternative for relief from trade secret misappropriation taking place in China.  Equally problematic, however, was the willingness of China’s judiciary to misconstrue the 337 decision as a victory for the Chinese defendants and to deem a lower court case as a model case while a related case was still pending on appeal to the court.  This case has also been an important counter-contra-factual indication regarding the relationship between trade secret theft in China and independence of the cour

How does this relate to legislative reform of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law in China?

China is currently revising its AntiUnfair Competition Law, which is the foundational law for trade secrets.  An important first step in addressing trade secret theft in China was the recognition that trade secret protection is a proper subject of the civil code in recent amendments to the civil code; i.e., that is not simply a matter of market regulation but of theft of a private property right.  The inclusion of trade secrets in the revisions to China’s general principles of the civil code was advocated in this blog, and also noted as appearing in an earlier draft.  The SPC, including Madame Tao Kaiyuan, were also involved in providing expert opinions on the draft.  The NPC comments on  the recent proposed revisions of the AUCL specifically calls out the important role of the SPC in revising the most recent draft of the AUCL, and note that civil compensation should assume a primary role in enforcing the anti-unfair competition law generally (善民事赔偿责任优先、与行政处罚并行的法律责任体系。不正当竞争违法行为首先损害了其他经营者的合法权益，需要民事赔偿优先，调动其他经营者制止不正当竞争行为的积极性。)  The primacy of civil enforcement is also found in Article 20 of the draft law itself with a clarification that a business operator who violates the law shall “bear civil liability” and that civil liability shall take priority over fines (Article 30).  I believe these efforts reflect some of the momentum generated by the SPC’s highly useful report, focusing on civil enforcement of trade secret.  Also of note is that at about the same time as that report, the US China Business Council outlined a number of the evidentiary problems in trade secret cases in its proposals for Chinese trade secret reform (2013), including burdensome notarization procedures, procedures which risk further disclosure of confidential information, difficulties in cooperation with the police, etc

The inclusion of trade secrets as a civil right was accomplished with civil code revisions adopted on March 15, 2017, with an implementation date of October 1, 2017.  (中华人民共和国民法总则)。  Article 63(5) includes trade secrets as a subject of intellectual property rights protection:

第一百二十三条　民事主体依法享有知识产权。知识产权是权利人依法就下列客体享有的专有的权利：    （一）作品；    （二）发明、实用新型、外观设计；    （三）商标；    （四）地理标志；    （五）商业秘密；    （六）集成电路布图设计；    （七）植物新品种；    （八）法律规定的其他客体。

Section 337 and the New Trade Secret Regime?

How do these reforms in trade secret litigation interact with US Section 337 procedures? Issues involving production of evidence between the US and China can be at the heart of many IP cases, but are especially critical in trade secret cases.   While some reforms have already been made in China, such as availability of preliminary evidence preservation measures in trade secret cases, the removal in the recent draft of the AUCL of a provision in an earlier draft that would have provided for a modest burden of proof reversal in trade secret matters is also troubling:

“Where the rights holders of trade secrets can prove that information used by others is substantially the same as their trade secrets and that those others had the capacity to obtain their trade secrets, those others shall bear the burden of proof to show that the information they used came from lawful sources.” (proposed Art. 22)

As the coauthor of this blog, Jay Reiziss, points out in his attached presentation to my recent class at Fordham, difficulties in gathering evidence have often been critical to use of Section 337 proceedings.  US Administrative Law Judges have granted motions to use the Hague Convention, such as where a foreign government formally weighs in (Switzerland indicated that it would cooperate with such a request (Certain Sintered Rare Earth Magnets, Inv. No. 337-TA855, Order No. 8). However other cases have determined that Hague Convention procedures would not be timely due to compressed ITC schedules (Certain Hardware Logic Emulation Systems, Inv. No. 337TA-383, Order No. 65).  Because of the threat of adverse inferences, there have also been several instances where Chinese respondents have reluctantly permitted plant tours to accommodate discovery requests (Certain R-134a Coolant, Inv. No. 337-TA-623.  FlexsysAmerica v. KumhoTire U.S.A., 5:05-cv-156 (N.D. Ohio)  Issues involving obtaining timely production of evidence have also appeared in other cases, notably the Gucci/Tiffany cases in the Second Circuit.

Even if the AUCL may not provide enough support for evidence production in China, the SPC has identified several bottlenecks in cross-border adjudication of disputes, including “hearing cross-border cases–service of process to overseas parties; obtaining evidence crossborder; determining facts that have occurred abroad; determining and applying foreign law”, which suggest that future cooperation with US courts may also improve.   Hopefully, as China improves its mechanisms to obtain foreign evidence and if it takes more proactive stances towards cross border cases, towards allowing production of evidence China, and as it improves its civil system, foreigners will be less reluctant to bring IP cases, especially trade secret cases, in China. In the meantime, it appears that the ITC and U.S. civil actions will continue to play a very important role in driving evidence based decisions on trade secret infringement involving China

 

Coauthored by Mark A. Cohen and Jay Reiziss.  This blog represents the authors’ personal views only and should not be attributable to any client, employer or any third party.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Should the NPC also consider Criminal Copyright Reform when it considers Copyright Reform?

Lamacchia.JPG

At this month’s National People’s Congress, an NPC spokesman noted that this year the NPC intends to address reform of the copyright law, which has been long delayed. However, reform of the substantive copyright law will not typically address the need to reform the criminal copyright law and to address the relationship between civil and criminal copyright law. This point was raised in the Weixin platform Zhichanli （知产力）, which addressed the key issues of criminal copyright law reform in a lively “cartoon” format (see above):

The four issues from the perspectives of the author of that blog are:

1.       Article 217 of the criminal code, mandates having a “profit motivation” in order for criminality to attach.Should the “profit motivation” requirement be removed from the criminal code?

2.       Whether to criminalize the Internet related right of “communication over information networks”?

3.       How to address secondary and principal liability of internet platforms?

4.       Three separate specific issues, including:

a)       How to criminalize destruction of technological protection measures?

b)      How to criminalize commercial scale use of piratical software?

c)       What are the thresholds to deal with online criminal enforcement?

In my view, these are all important issues, which should be considered in the context of copyright reform.    Many of these  issues were raised in DS/362, the WTO enforcement case which the United States brought against China.    Of particular note was that the United States raised the history of  amending US laws to address willful copyright infringement that caused large scale harm without necessarily causing commercial gain (the LaMacchia case, in the cartoon above).  In addition, the United States also recognized that thresholds based on the numbers of copies would not capture the harm caused by technological changes which permitted large digital quantities to be distributed on line or in compressed formats.   One of the current thresholds involves 500 “flat articles”  ( 500 张 ) (typically used for CD’s or flat pieces of paper), which the WTO panel called “copies, for the sake of simplicity” and is an awkward determinant for infringement in rapidly moving technologies.

Also of note is that criminal IP enforcement has become more important in China. This was brought to my attention by a Chinese judge who mentioned that while China opposed the WTO case, it was now widely recognized that criminal IP is an important part of an IP enforcement system. In a sense, the US may have lost the 2007 battle over criminal IP at the WTO, but clearly won the war. The data bears this out. When the WTO was filed against China, there were only about 904 criminal IP  infringement cases in China (2007).   In 2013, by comparison there were 7,804 infringement cases – an increase of about 8 times, not including increases in other provisions of the criminal code that also can address IP infringement, such as crimes involving illegal business operations or fake and shoddy goods.

While China recognizes that criminal IP is enforcement it an important part of its enforcement system,  an equally important question concerns the role of the relatively small criminal IP enforcement system in light of China’s civil, administrative and customs enforcement (see chart below).  In addition to the increasing number of criminal IP prosecutions,  the increasing numbers of referrals from China’s administrative copyright enforcement to criminal copyright enforcement is an encouraging trend in this regard.  An even more encouraging sign would be consideration by the NPC of criminal copyright law reform at the same time as it considers substantive copyright law reform.  As criminal law reform goes through different procedures at the NPC, working on both issues simultaneously may entail some coordination, but would help ensure that any changes to China’s copyright regime is comprehensive and would set a good precedent for other IP legislative reforms coming up, such as in reform of the trade secret regime in the Antiunfair Competition Law.

 

criminalcourtdockets.JPG

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Anti-Unfair Competition Law Released for Public Comment

The National People’s Congress released a draft of the Anti-unfair Competition Law for public comment on February 25, 2017.  A draft translation is already available on the China Law Translate website, which has also posted the Chinese original. I previously published a draft with comments of the ABA and George Mason’s Global Antitrust Institute here. The comment period closes March 25, 2017.  The NPC Observer blog is also following developments, including posting the official explanation, which I have also made available here . 

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E-Commerce Law Up for Public Comment

The National People’s Congress announced this week that it has released a draft of the E-Commerce Law for public comment.  The public comment period began December 27, 2016 with comments due by January 26, 2016.  Although focused on the overall development and regulation of e-commerce, the draft also contains provisions regarding IP protection by platforms and their responsibilities, in order to preserve market order and fair competition 市场秩序与公平竞争.  The draft in Chinese is attached here, with relevant provisions and machine translations below.  I hope to provide more detailed comments later – I am particularly interested in how this draft relates to provisions in the tort law, IP laws and civil laws regarding online liability, as well as how enforcement authority over infringements for online operators will be amended and divided up amongst the various IP agencies if this draft is implemented into law.

Article 53 provides:

第五十三条   电子商务经营主体应当依法保护知识产权，建立知识产权保护规则。电子商务第三方平台明知平台内电子商务经营者侵犯知识产权的，应当依法采取删除、屏蔽、断开链接、终止交易和服务等必要措施。         

Article 53 The electronic commerce business principal operator shall protect intellectual property rights in accordance with the law and establish rules for the protection of intellectual property rights. If the e-commerce operator infringes the intellectual property rights within the platform, it shall take the necessary measures such as deleting, shielding, breaking the link, terminating the transaction and service according to law.

Article 54 provides:

第五十四条   电子商务第三方平台接到知识产权权利人发出的平台内经营者实施知识产权侵权行为通知的，应当及时将该通知转送平台内经营者，并依法采取必要措施。知识产权权利人因通知错误给平台内经营者造成损失的，依法承担民事责任。   

平台内经营者接到转送的通知后，向电子商务第三方平台提交声明保证不存在侵权行为的，电子商务第三方平台应当及时终止所采取的措施，将该经营者的声明转送发出通知的知识产权权利人，并告知该权利人可以向有关行政部门投诉或者向人民法院起诉。   

电子商务第三方平台应当及时公示收到的通知、声明及处理结果.

Article 54 Where a third-party platform for e-commerce receives a notice from a platform operator of intellectual property rights issued by the owner of the platform for intellectual property infringement, it shall promptly transmit the notice to the operators within the platform and take the necessary measures according to law. If the intellectual property right owner causes any loss to the operator of the platform due to the wrong notification, he shall bear civil liability according to law.
If the platform operator submits a declaration to the e-commerce third-party platform to ensure that there is no infringement, the third-party platform shall promptly terminate the measures taken and forward the statement of the operator to the notification Property rights, and inform the right person to the relevant administrative departments of complaints or to the people ‘s court.
E-commerce third-party platform shall promptly publicize the received notice, statement and processing results.

Article 88 provides:

第八十八条   电子商务第三方平台违反本法第五十三条的规定，明知平台内经营者实施侵犯知识产权行为未采取必要措施的，由各级人民政府有关部门责令限期改正；逾期不改正的，责令停业整顿，并处以三万元以上十万元以下的罚款；情节严重的，吊销营业执照，并处以十万元以上五十万元以下的罚款。         

Article 88 If a third-party platform for e-commerce violates the provisions of Article 53 of this Law and knows that the operator of the platform does not take the necessary measures for infringement of intellectual property rights, the relevant departments of the people’s governments at various levels shall order it to make corrections within a prescribed time limit; If the circumstances are serious, the business license shall be revoked and a fine of not less than 100,000 yuan but not more than 500,000 yuan shall be imposed.

 

 

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Book Review on Report on Development of Intellectual Property Development in China (2015)

The Report on Development of Intellectual Property Development in China 2015 中国知识产权发展报告 (IP Teaching and Research Center of Renmin University of China / IP Academy of Renmin University) (Tsinghua University Press, 2016) (320 pp., 98 RMB) (http://tup.com.cn/booksCenter/book_06886601.html) (the “Report”), is a bilingual Chinese-English report prepared by Renmin University and commissioned by the Ministry of Education.   The book presents a comprehensive summary of developments and challenges in IP protection and enforcement in China, with a particularly strong focus on legislative developments, the role of national plans, the history of IP in China, government funded R&D, education and training-related issues, and the pressing needs of market and legal reforms.

After a general overview (Part I), where the authors discuss various national plans, and general legislation, such as the Civil Law and the Law to Counter Unfair Competition, the authors discuss patents and innovation (Part II).  The Report notes that quality needs to be improved in life science patents, most of which come from small inventors (such as in TCM).  The report also candidly references critiques of SIPO’s performance (p. 150), as well as the low quality of university patent applications and suggests that there should be additional attention paid to university IP commercialization, including the many restrictions that apply to state-owned assets, a matter that was litigated in the Infineon case here in the United States many years ago.  The report also criticizes unrestricted subsidies and other incentives for patent applications, which has led to “the amount of patent applications to be falsely huge” and has given rise the problem of “rubbish patents.” (p. 163).  Regarding China’s extraordinary growth in patent filings, the authors conclude, as I have often in this blog, that “the motivational role of the market should be strengthened” in lieu of such incentives.

Regarding the proposed Patent Law amendments, the authors also argue that judicial decisions on patent validity should be final and not be subject to a final decision by an administrative agency, and that there should be appropriate limitations on administrative enforcement involving patent infringements (pp. 166-167).  The authors also seek to limit the abusive assertion of unexamined utility models and designs, including by authorizing the courts to consider the abusive assertion of patent rights a matter of unfair competition (p. 173).

In discussing trademarks, the authors similarly note that despite the huge numbers of trademark filings, Chinese companies play an undersized role in lists of global brands.  The authors identify problems in “rush registration of trademarks” involving grabbing a trademark previously used by others, particularly where a mark has international popularity, where there are fictional figures and titles of movies and television hits, and in the case of celebrity names (p. 183).   The authors suggest that where a trademark is not being used, there should be no compensation given to the infringer, as one step to address rush registrations – a practice that apparently is already being used in Shanghai and perhaps other courts.  The authors also suggest that in the case of foreign rights owners, the courts should take into account the popularity of the brand enjoyed outside of China and the subjective malice on the person conducting the registration.   As with low quality patents, the author see a useful role for courts in adjudicating these rush registrations as acts of unfair competition (pp. 186-187).

These themes of addressing proposed legislation, adopting new legislation to new circumstances, more effectively insuring that markets rather than government fiat direct IP commercialization and protection,  and using unfair competition law to address abuse of IP rights play an important role in other chapters of the book, including the chapters on Copyright Law (Part IV), Competition law (Part V), IP protection by the Judiciary (Part VI), IP Education (Part VII), developments in Shenzhen City and Jiangsu Province (Part VIII), and other issues, such as free trade agreements (Part IX).

Overall the authors support the role of the courts as the principle vehicle for adjudicating IP disputes in a market-oriented economy, and that the IP laws should be revised to “attach importance to enhancing the leading and final role of the judicial protection of the intellectual property rights, limit and regulate intellectual property-related administrative enforcement …” (p. 240).  The authors also support the tendency to increase damages on IP disputes (P. 282), the role of specialized IP courts and the case law system, and deficiencies in administrative enforcement reform including problems of coordination among agencies.

In their summary, the authors note that “the sound operation of the IP system is not merely an issue of the IP law; it relies on an improved legal system and environment of the rule of law.  Only with innovation based on the market economy and driven by market interest is it possible to be the lasting, stable fore to drive the socio-economic development.” (pp. 315-316).  The book is a very useful summary of some of the hot issues now facing the Chinese IP system, with a focus on rule of law and market orientation.

I look forward to the 2016 edition.