Filed under: Uncategorized
On Wednesday, He Yafei, one of China’s most senior diplomats and politicians, met with Francis Gurry, the Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to discuss China’s progress on Intellectual Property.
During the meeting, Gurry praised China’s Intellectual Property laws and the progress they have made in recent years. WIPO has stated that they want to continue working closely with China to further strengthen their cooperation regarding IP development.
China currently ranks first in the world in terms of domestic trademark and patent applications and third in the world for international patent applications.
He Yafei expressed his gratitude and ensured that China will continue working closely with WIPO.
Source: China IPR
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: China, copyright, intellectual property, IP, IPR, law, patent, trademark, Unilin, Yekalon
Yekalon and Unilin are engaged in a patent dispute
Chinese building materials provider Yekalon Industry Inc says it will take legal action “at any cost” to defend its self-developed locking technology for laminate and wood floorings.
The private company, based in the southern boom city of Shenzhen adjacent to Hong Kong, was charged by its much stronger competitor Unilin, a subsidiary of the US-listed Mohawk and located in Belgium, with patent infringement at a world fair in Germany in January.
“We have hired top-notch lawyers in Germany and will appear at the court of Hamburg on Wednesday,” said Wilson He Yixin, chairman of Yekalon. “We will never surrender to these groundless allegations.”
The focus of the case lies in a glueless locking technology for laminate and wood floorings. Unilin has owned patents since 1996 for the method and duopolized the market with another European company, Valinge.
However, the Chinese company invented a new locking method in 2005 which can connect the flooring by vertically tapping in the edges of the planks instead of the established technique of angling and snapping horizontally, according to He.
“Our locking technology is completely self-developed. It works theoretically different from that of Unilin. How can we infringe its patents?” he asked, adding that Yekalon has applied for international patents for the invention under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and will soon complete the process.
It is the second big clash between Yekalon and Unilin.
In July 2006, 18 Chinese flooring exporters, including Yekalon, were put under a Section 337 investigation by the US International Trade Commission (USITC) for patent infringement by Unilin and its subsidiaries.
Yekalon was the only company in the group that was not condemned by the investigation because the USITC found that its locking technology did not infringe the patent claims asserted.
The other Chinese companies who were using Unilin’s locking technology were ordered to pay $100,000 to $120,000 in royalties and $0.65 in royalties per cubic meter to the patent owner, or they would not be allowed to export their glueless laminate flooring panels to the US market.
It’s estimated that both Unilin and Valinge could earn more than $1 billion in royalties and licensing fees from flooring companies around the world.
Source: China Daily
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Beijing, China, China Admnistration, copyright, counterfeit, google, intellectual property, IP, law, lawsuit, patent, trademark, writers
China’s National Working Group of Eliminating Pornography and Illegal Publications has announced achievements that it has made since campaigns were launched earlier this year against illegal online and mobile phone publications. NWGEPIP stated on October 20 that since the special campaigns were launched to crack down on vulgar online and mobile phone content, China had seized 1414 illegal online literary works, closed 20 websites that were found spreading pornographic information, and deleted a total of more than 30,000 links to illegal web pages. Meanwhile, NWGEPIP has also issued a special circular which asks each region around China to make efforts to stop the spread of vulgar novels online and remove unhealthy content from websites. In addition, NWGEPIP also states operators of websites publishing pornographic publications will be severely punished. A representative from General Administration of Press and Publication stated that in the first nine months of this year, various measures were taken to monitor online publications and up to 50,000 literary works of more than 4000 websites were monitored. GAPP will continue to focus on four areas: making relevant regulations, speeding up the construction of online publication monitoring system, establishing a GAPP online publication monitoring center, and promoting the construction of Chinese online literary publication platform. News about these closures comes days after Chinese authors rallied online against Google’s plans to start a digital Chinese library service. Chinawriter.com.cn has posted a message allegedly from Google which states that the American search engine will compensate Chinese writers USD60 for each book of each writer who agrees to allow Google to use the book online. The search engine stated in the announcement that it would pay at least USD60 to each writer for each book if the writer agrees to reconcile with Google, and the writer can receive 63% of the revenue from readers’ online downloading of the book in the future. Many writers have refused to accept the reconciliation agreement and have spurned Google’s take-it-or-leave-it attitude. The authors state they plan to continue to fight Google’s plans.
Source: Shanghai Daily
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: alcatel lucent, China, China IPR, intellectual property, IP, law, lawsuit, Microsoft, supreme court, trademark
Microsoft successfuly appealed a court decision in it's legal battle with Alcatel-Lucent
A United States federal appeals court has said Microsoft Corp does not have to pay Alcatel-Lucent US$ 358 million for patent infringement because of problems with how the damages were calculated.
The disputed patent covers a method of entering information into fields on a computer screen without using a keyboard. Alcatel-Lucent says Microsoft’s Outlook calendar and other programs illegally used this technology.
A District Court jury determined that damages should roughly equal what Microsoft would have paid up front to license the technology from Alcatel-Lucent. But last Friday, the US Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit said the telecommunications company didn’t prove its technology was valuable enough to have merited US$358 million in royalties.
The appeals court judges told a district court to reconsider the penalty.
Alcatel-Lucent spokeswoman Mary Ward said in an e-mail that the company was disappointed with the decision.
However, in the same ruling, judges affirmed the underlying verdict against Microsoft, saying it was supported by substantial evidence.
This patent suit is the last of six stemming from claims that Lucent Technologies Inc, which was bought by Alcatel in 2006, filed in 2003 against PC makers Gateway Inc and Dell Inc over technology developed by Bell Labs, Lucent’s research arm. Microsoft later joined the list of defendants.
Source: Shanghai Daily
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: China, Green Dam, intellectual property, internet filtering
China’s computer users would not face a compulsory mass installation of Green Dam Internet filtering software, China’s Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong said Thursday.
He said it would depend on consumers to choose if they wished to install the software or not. But the installation of the software on computers in public places including schools and Internet cafes would still go ahead.
Plans to install the software program, Green Dam-Youth Escort, have aroused controversy.
“Installation is intended to block violent and pornographic content on the Internet to protect children”, Li said, Individuals could install the filtering software voluntarily, if they so wished.
“Any move to politicize the issue or to attack China’s Internet management system is irresponsible and not in line with reality”, he said.
Installation of the software was postponed on June 30. Li said the ministry was still gauging public opinion before installation and would adjust its plans accordingly.
Work on upgrading the Green Dam software is also in progress.
The market would still be open to similar software programs, Li said.
Source: XinHua News
According to incomplete statistics, the amount of IP lawsuit is increasing by 30% every year. Especially this year, the amount of IP lawsuit in the first half of 2009 has approximated to the total amount of 2008. The “Experts’ Opinion on IP Lawsuit” sponsored by Kangxin IP Cooperation was held in Beijing recently, and many IP related experts made detailed explanations on enterprises patent legal protection and patent infringement lawsuit. [Chinese version is available on SIPO.gov.cn]
Source: IPR in China
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Cargill Inc, Changfeng, Chenyue, EPO, infringement, IPR, Microsoft, Nantong, patent, patent alliance, Resin, Shunde, Ziyue
Cargill withdraws case
The US International Trade Commission (ITC) permitted US company Cargill Inc to withdraw its patent infringement case against Nantong Foreign Trade Medicines & Health Products Co Ltd of China, marking a victory for the Chinese company.
The investigation was based on a complaint filed by Cargill on Jan 28, alleging that the importation and sales of certain non-shellfish derived glucosamine and other products of Nantong Medicines infringed on a patent owned by Cargill.
The complainant requested that the ITC issue an exclusion order and a “cease and desist” order.
Respondent Nantong Medicines brought 300 sets of materials and 12 boxes of files to challenge the complainant. The evidence forced Cargill to withdraw the case.
Patent alliance grows
Since its formation two years ago, the Shunde Patent Alliance of Electric Pressure Ovens has doubled its membership, according to a recent corporate patent conference.
In October 2006, Midea and three other companies formed the alliance in the Shunde district of Foshan in Guangdong province.
Initially there were four members, and now there are seven. The alliance’s patents grew from 46 to 195, accounting for 20 percent of all domestic patents in the industry.
Resin Systems patent
Resin Systems Inc (RS), a technology innovator and manufacturer of advanced composite products for infrastructure markets, announced that its RStandard modular composite poles are now patented in China.
This patent supports the company’s broader commercial strategy of protecting its unique technology in one of the world’s larger economies and fastest-growing electric power grids.
As the application of RS’s modular pole technology broadens, this patent, granted by the State Intellectual Property Office of China, ensures a secure entry for RStandard poles into the Chinese utility and communications markets, the company said.
About European patents
To enhance understanding of the European patent system, China’s State Intellectual Property Office and European Patent Office (EPO) recently held a seminar on the European patent system in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province.
EPO representatives said they hope more Chinese inventors apply for patents in Europe to better safeguard intellectual property rights in the overseas market.
According to the agency, online applications for patents can be made from China via the agency’s EPOLINE network.
IPR and Tibet
The State Intellectual Property Office and Intellectual Property Office of Tibet autonomous region held a workshop for Tibetan medical companies on patent use and the advantage of cultivating intellectual property rights (IPR) in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
The workshop in Llasa discussed how TCM and the Tibetan medicine industry bring benefits to ordinary people and enable the development of traditional knowledge-based industries.
Organizers said the workshop would help increase awareness of IPR concerning TCM and Tibetan medicine and make it easier to apply for patents in those fields.
Another Microsoft case
Microsoft Corp has taken legal action against three Shanghai companies over allegations of software piracy.
The case represents another example of the US software giant widening its net to challenge not only IT giants, but also small businesses.
Representatives of computer retailer Shanghai Changfeng Information Technology Co Ltd and its suppliers recently faced Microsoft attorneys in Shanghai No 2 Intermediate People’s Court.
Microsoft is seeking about 320,000 yuan in compensation from retailer Changfeng Information Technology and two of its computer suppliers, Shanghai Chenyue Information Technology Co Ltd and Shanghai Ziyue Network Technology Co Ltd.
Microsoft told the court that Changfeng Information Technology had long installed pirated software in computers before selling them.
A ruling has not yet been issued.
Source: China Daily
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Beijing Founder Electronics Co Ltd, China, copyright, infringement, lawsuit, P&G
Beijing Founder Electronics Co Ltd has accused P&G of copyright infringement.
China’s No 1 provider of Chinese font products, Beijing Founder Electronics Co Ltd, has brought consumer goods producer P&G Guangzhou Ltd to court for alleged copyright infringement.
Founder Electronics is asking for 1.34 million yuan in compensation.
The company claims that P&G Guangzhou for the past two years has used a font developed by Founder Electronics on P&G packages, logos, trademarks and advertisements without permission.
The font has been used on 63 P&G products, according to Founder Electronics.
The involved font, or typeface, is called qianti, which means slim due to its resemblance to a slim lady.
Founder Electronics sued P&G Guangzhou and international retailer Carrefour in August 2008 for selling products with the qianti font.
The case reached a Beijing court in late June. A ruling has not yet been issued.
Going to court
“We have no other choice but to turn to the court since P&G Guangzhou turned a blind eye to our continuous efforts to negotiate the issue,” Huang Xuejun, director of the Matrix Development Department of Founder Electronics, was quoted by China Times as saying.
P&G Guangzhou declined to discuss the lawsuit.
“It is not convenient to comment on a case under judicial proceedings, but we hope the case will be decided as soon as possible,” Zhang Qunxiang, a spokesman for P&G Guangzhou, said.
“The Chinese characters are a tool for public communications, and no government entitles the monopoly rights of fonts to a certain company or an individual,” Zhou Lin, an agent of P&G Guangzhou, said after the June court trial.
“Founder Electronics just adjusted the shapes of the characters but not the original structure. It can only claim rights to the digitalized database, rather than all the characters,” Zhou said.
The 63 brands described as bearing the qianti font include the high-recognition P&G names of Rejoice, Crest, Sassoon, Safeguard and Whisper.
“If P&G Guangzhzou loses the suit, it will cost a lot for the company to design the logos, package the products and reprint the advertisements. The money which has been invested in marketing is hard to get back,” Zhang Bingwu, a senior brand marketing expert, told China Business Weekly.
“What’s more, changing the package of the involved products will lower consumers’ loyalty to these brands. Otherwise, the company has to pay Founder Electronics to use the font legally,” Zhang Bingwu said.
Founder Electronics charges P&G Guangzhou 10,000 yuan for a font, which contains more than 6,000 characters.
“In fact, with our fonts, 90 percent can be used free. Only special fonts developed by Founder Electronics should incur charges when they are used for commercial purposes,” Huang of Founder Electronics said.
Founder Electronics bought the copyright of the qianti font from creator Qi Li and then developed and digitalized the font in 1998.
Last April, the company registered the qianti font with the National Copyright Administration and received a copyright certificate from the government agency.
In addition to P&G Guangzhzou, Founder Electronics has taken two online game companies Blizzard Entertainment and the9 to court for alleged copyright infringement of its font.
Huang said companies such as Sony, Samsung and Panasonic have all paid Founder Electronics for the rights to use their fonts legally.
Public awareness
“People’s awareness of font copyright is weak. For example, we just sold about 2,000 sets of the newly developed ‘Xu Jinglei’ font when there have been millions of sets of pirated fonts,” Huang said.
Zhang Bingwu said a lawsuit against a well-known brand increases public awareness.
“Suing the famous brand P&G can raise people’s awareness about protecting the font copyright,” Zhang Bingwu said.
Jiang Yuhong with the Intellectual Property Affairs Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology said fonts should fall into the scope of copyright protection when the national Copyright Act is amended next time.
“The lawsuit may not be a bad thing, since it shows the determination of Founder Electronics to protect its copyrights of fonts,” Xu Xinming, a lawyer with www.ciplawyer.com, told China Business Weekly.
Xu said that a stronger enforcement mechanism for font copyrights protection is expected to grow out of the court cases.
He used karaoke music as an example.
“Things are changing. People were used to enjoying the songs free of charge, but after a series of trials on this issue, the public started realizing that it is reasonable to pay to use the songs in karaoke,” Xu said.
In the long run, the best resolution to font copyright suits will rely on proper charges for font use, as well as development of font copyrights management, You Yunting, a senior intellectual property lawyer with Shanghai’s JoinWay Law Firm, was quoted by China Times as saying.
P&G Guangzhou is the first joint venture in China of US-based Procter & Gamble, the world’s No 1 consumer products company.
Founder Electronics is a subsidiary of the Founder Group, a Chinese IT company established by Peking University in 1986.
Source: China Daily
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: China, game plagiarizing, intellectual property, Korean game, MU, MU X, Webzen
Chinese game producers have crossed the line in plagiarizing Korean games.
According to industry sources, The9, a Chinese game manufacturer, has created an imitation of Webzen’s online role-playing game MU, called MU X. It plans to exhibit the game to the public on July 23.
The company that administers MU in China, The9, blatantly stole Webzen’s characters without any contract or agreement.
Moreover, The9 has been expanding its cooperation with Korean companies after it failed to renew its World of Warcraft contract with Blizzard Entertainment. This is an alarming move that calls for stronger protection of the intellectual property rights of Korean companies.
The9 is known to have planned the creation of MU X two years ago. It displayed an image of characters that closely resemble those of MU with a short comment that says it has inherited the world of MU on the teaser site of MU X, mux.the9.com.
The Chinese name of MU X is The History of Miracles (Ki Juk Jun ki), a name quite similar that of MU, which is Miracle (Ki Juk).
The9 is scheduled to present MU X to the public for the first time at the Chinajoy 2009, the largest game exhibition in China that opens on July 23. The9 has even sent out invitations in China to attend the press interview. Webzen, the creator of MU, expressed distress at the situation.
However, the situation is further complicated by the fact that The9 is currently controlling the distribution of Sun Online, another creation of Webzen, in China.
“We sent an official document to The9, urging them to do a prior consultation,” said a personnel at Webzen. “We will consider a countermeasure after evaluating the degree of resemblance after the exhibition on the July 23.”
Source: Korea IT Times
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Best Buy, Changzhou Asian, intellectual property, patent infringement, Wal-Mart
| Best Buy Co, Wal-Mart Stores Inc and other companies were sued over dashboard mounts for navigation devices in a rare case of a Chinese company seeking to enforce patent rights in a US court.
Changzhou Asian Endergonic Electronic Technology Co, based in Changzhou, claims the retailers are infringing its patent on a design for the dashboard mounts by selling products made by a competitor. The patent was issued in March. The Chinese company wants cash and a court order to prevent further use of the design. The closely held company intends to build a market in the United States and filed the complaint to deal with “the knockoff”, said Chad Nydegger, a lawyer for Changzhou Asian. The company also is suing the manufacturer in China, accusing it of infringing two Chinese patents, he said. The complaint, filed July 2 in US District Court in Texarkana, Texas, reflects the rising use of the US patent system by Chinese companies. US patent applications by residents of China surged 12-fold between fiscal years 2000 and 2008, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office. “The Chinese are becoming sophisticated enough to take advantage of the patent system in the United States,” said Brian Nester, a lawyer with Fish & Richardson in Washington, DC, who often represents South Korean companies in US patent fights. “You will see more Chinese companies filing suit in the United States,” Nester said. Michelle Bradford, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart, said the company had not been served with the complaint, and that the company had no comment. Kelly Groeler, a spokesperson for Best Buy, did not return messages seeking comment on the suit.
A shopping cart sits outside a Wal-Mart Supercenter store in Rogers, Arkansas. First case Lenovo Group Ltd, China’s biggest maker of personal computers, has sued companies over patents it acquired when it bought International Business Machine Corp’s PC division in 2005. Nydegger, of Workman Nydegger in Salt Lake City, said Changzhou Asian, which makes Sianbag GPS mounts, lost a bidding war to a company, which he didn’t name, that makes the Nav-Mat mounts sold by the retailers. He said his client is willing to negotiate with the US stores. “They were bidding against this other company that has copied their design,” he said. “Their goal is to capture US market share.” Nydegger said his client also predicts there will be more patent-infringement lawsuits by Chinese companies in the US. First-world country “My client’s view is China is starting to emerge as a first-world country. There’s been a significant influx of technology, and they are starting to make improvements. They are becoming innovators, not just copiers,” Nydegger said. China’s applications for industrial patents rose 22.5 percent to more than 110,000 last year, according to Lou Qinjian, China’s vice-minister of Industry and Information Technology. Chinese mainland residents filed 5,129 US patent applications in fiscal 2008, according to preliminary patent office figures. That makes it eighth in the number of filings by residents of foreign countries, behind Japan, Germany, South Korea, China’s Taiwan province, Canada, the United Kingdom and France. The lawsuit over dashboard mounts might be the case of a Chinese company “dipping a toe in the water” to learn how the US legal system deals with intellectual property issues, said lawyer Robert Krupka of Kirkland & Ellis in Los Angeles, who has represented Japanese companies in US courts. A ‘licensing play’ “They’re very carefully picking and choosing their battles,” Krupka said. “This is a licensing play, not a real desire to go to court,” he said. Krupka pointed to both the location of the court where the suit was filed and the types of companies that were sued. Retailers are frequent targets of patent-infringement complaints over products sold in their stores, he said. Other companies named in the complaint include Target Corp, Office Depot Inc, Radio Shack Corp, Staples Inc and TomTom NV. Staples spokesman Owen Davis and Office Depot spokesman Brian Levine said their companies do not comment on pending litigation. An e-mailed response from Radio Shack’s media relations department said the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation, either. Taco Titulaer, a spokesperson for Amsterdam-based TomTom, did not return messages seeking a comment. Multiple lawsuits Minnesota-based Best Buy, the world’s biggest electronics retailer, has been named in nine patent-infringement suits this year. Minnesota-based Target, the second-biggest US discount retailer, has been sued eight times over patents in 2009. Arkansas-based Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, has been sued five times. Changzhou Asian filed the complaint in Texarkana, Texas, part of the Eastern District of Texas, the most popular jurisdiction for patent-infringement litigation. There were 322 suits filed there in the year ended Sept 30, or 11 percent of all new patent suits in the United States, according to the US Administrative Office of the Courts. Patent owners have won 77 percent of trials in the district’s court in Marshall, Texas, compared with a 59 percent win rate nationwide, said Greg Upchurch, director of research for St. Louis-based LegalMetric Inc, which compiles litigation data for law firms and companies. The Changzhou Asian patent, with two Chinese residents listed as inventors, is for a unique, non-functional design and thus has a shorter term of protection than a patent on an invention.
Source: Bloomberg News
|
