Category Archives: Conferences

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Second Annual Berkeley-Tsinghua Transnational IP Litigation Conference Is Fast Approaching

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Berkeley Law and Tsinghua law will be co-hosting their Second Annual Conference on Transnational IP Litigation, at the campus of UC Berkeley on October 22, 2019.  Details, including registration information, are available here.

The program will look at strategic concerns in many of the hot issues in cross-border US-China IP litigation, including trade secret cases, standards-essential patents, whether foreigners “win” in each other’s jurisdictions, Section 337, criminal cases, on-line enforcement, civil litigation and the role of China’s new IP courts, administrative challenges to validity, forum non conveniens claims, enforcement at trade fairs, and other issues.  Please register soon if you are interested in attending.

We have great speakers and we look forward to having a great audience!

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Upcoming Program on Fashion and IP Law

I will be speaking on February 20, 2019 at Berkeley Law at 12:50 in a Fashion and IP discussion and screening with my former Fordham colleague Prof. Susan Scafidi. We will be screening the recent film Fashion and IP.

The program is free and open to the public.

Fashion and IP Poster - Feb. 20th (1)

 

Here’s a report from last year  of the Council of Fashion Designers of America on the problem of bad faith registrations of trademarks in China which discusses the pervasiveness of the problem, including the costs imposed on small and medium enterprise members, as well as the impact of serial squatters.

This report further underscores the importance of addressing tolerance of bad faith activities in China’s IP regime in current bilateral trade discussions as well as the need to recognize the significant improvements that are being made that have begun to address them.  Amongst the many significant cases addressing bad faith registrations in the clothing sector was the Michael Jordan case in 2016, which was based in part on naming rights and was reported here.  Another significant case from last year involving protection of trademarks and design elements that has significance for the fashion industry was Bayer v. Li Qing, which involved pirating of a Bayer design for its Coppertone lotions for pirate registrations, and Bayer’s assertions of a copyright interest in those designs to defeat the pirate’s assertions of trademark infringement in a declaratory judgment action involving the anti-unfair competition law, trademark and copyright laws.  The case was also notable as the court did not suspend its decisions pending the outcome of trademark invalidity decisions.

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Upcoming Berkeley Law Privacy Conference

China is developing a robust commercial privacy and cybersecurity framework. A cybersecurity law took effect in 2017, multiple agencies are issuing guidelines, and a new e-commerce law with privacy and cybersecurity provisions just entered into force on January 1, 2019.  Further privacy legislation is being drafted, as China may be looking to develop a companion to the comprehensive privacy law of Europe. (Meanwhile, the US has no comprehensive privacy or cybersecurity law; Congress will debate the issue this year, but the outcome is quite uncertain.)

This raises a number of provocative question: In terms of the relationship between consumers and corporations, is China becoming more privacy-protective than the US? How should we understand the overall privacy and cybersecurity trends in China? How well does China’s overall legal environment support the implementation of the new and proposed laws?

To try to answer some of these questions, the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology is organizing a one-day conference in San Francisco on March 1.  The agenda is here; registration is here.

Much of the focus will be comparative, with an emphasis on interoperability and cross-border compliance: Given the rapid developments in privacy and cybersecurity law in China and Europe, how can innovative companies that want to offer their goods and services worldwide comply? Topics will include the definition of reasonable cybersecurity standards under the laws of China, the EU and the US; corporate data governance strategies in the face of overlapping requirements; and enforcement.

The event is co-sponsored by Peking University, The EastWest Institute, The United States Information Technology Office (USITO), The Asia Society, JD.com, and New America.