Hong Kong Ip News
Hong Kong IP news. March 2009
Hong Kong Secretary for Commerce & Economic Development Rita Lau says an intellectual capital management body will be launch to oversee the development of IP matters targeting the SME’s. Mrs Lau added that free consultancy services will be provided to these companies. Presently, SME’s don’t get any help in intellectual property matters, except for paid services from patent lawyers and agents. In view of the global financial meltdown and the lack of funds, free IP consultancy services for the SME are a god send. They will get help to build, manage and harness their intellectual capital, a topic that is little discussed now.
Aside from actual assistance for the SME’s, the government is upping its profile by arranging for an international convention of the Asian Patent Attorneys Association and a regional symposium of the World Intellectual Property Organisation. It is hoped that local SME’s will find the opportunity to interact with these international IP practitioners so that they will be able to maximize their intangible assets that they already possessed as well as those that they might not be aware that they have in their businesses. Besides having IP assets, many SME’s are not certain of their IP rights, especially with regards to their international enforcibility of those rights.
Here is something that China is doing right!
As part of the economic re-boosting, China has recently pumped into their economy billions of dollars the purpose of which is to put money back into its people to churn up domestic consumption. This is a way to prevent its economy from the fall out from the decrease in buying of its manufactured products from the Western countries. It is able to achieve this as it has a large reserve of foreign assets accrued from a decade of continuous growth of its GNP. It knows that it cannot fail in this area as it would be dragged into great political upheaval if it does not succeed. Perhaps, this time around, China will be able to show the world how a large economy should be run. It has all the going for it as its people are hard working, earning more than they can spend, unlike those that have been just printing papers and spending more than they can earn!
Would the WTO ruling against China open a floodgate for US media?
Following a complaint from the MPAA (the Motion Picture Association of America) implicating the Chinese government of stifling the entry of American film by way of forcibly channeling it through Chinese State run firms, the WTO ruled that China must change its policy in accordance with accepted international world trading practices. Together with a previous WTO ruling reprimanding China’s lack of protection of intellectual property rights, China must now take immediate action to stay tune as a full member of WTO. It is a stunning blow for China, but it was obvious that the Chinese government was dragging its feet with the pretext that imported media should be subjected to censorship, just so that its population will not be negatively influenced by western norms. But now with the WTO ruling, it will be a hard act for China to tow the lines of the other major world economic players since it has vowed to embrace WTO membership.
It might be too early to pop the Champaign bottle for the MPAA and other media players because China is a big country, and adhering to any new law might just not work. A case to remember is that media piracy is so infused in society that getting the latest DVD (sometimes, it is not even available in the US yet) is as easy as receiving an SMS from an underground supplier of pirated film (the pirate channels will send the mobile message to their trusted client when the copy is available) and answering in the affirmative. You can have the latest show delivered to your doorstep discretely and not be caught! Yes, very few people bothered to go to the cinemas now since DVD players are a dime a dozen and watching the show at home is so much better and uncensored as well. Will China appeal to the WTO ruling, or does it make any difference anyway?
August 13, 2009.
China is shutting its doors again
Just imagine, a cheap utility patent (the Chinese version anyway) for $70 and you can get it quick in a few weeks time (pay up if you need it faster)! And who says they don’t respect intellectual property? It seems that filing of patents in China is the hottest thing since the fake milk scare in 2008. Every Tom, Dick and Harry worth his salt has filed a patent. But there is a distinct difference in the patent system here. When you file a utility patent in China, you only need to pay $70. Almost immediately, you could be the owner of the patent because there is no review as to whether it is new or not. It is just a formality, to serve a purpose best known to them.
The problems begin if you found out that the patent in question looks like yours. It would then be a real problem if you have not registered it there yet. So off you go to their courts to file a complaint that there is patent infringement. Unfortunately, the Chinese courts will throw out your complaint, and in a worst case scenario, might fine you for infringing a Chinese patent instead. This happened to France's Schneider Electric, who was fined $ 23 million for infringing on a Chinese patent! To make it look ridiculous, the French company had many patents filed on its technology long before they came to China.
From afar, we can see that the Chinese is really good at twisting things to benefit themselves. For years, they were pressured to put in place a patent system such that investors can bring in technologies and to have recourse to go to court if their technologies are stolen. And they did put up a patent system, but it seems now that their idea is not to protect foreigner’s ideas, but instead, it is to protect their own industries from competitions. In other words, they are going to ‘shut their doors’ to outsiders just so that their own enterprises can survive, at least for the mean time. For what other reasons do you have if not for protecting your own kind when you don’t even need to review prior art before you grant a ‘utility patent’? There will surely be complaints coming this way soon.
September 4, 2009.
Forced licensing for green technologies
In a preamble to the Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen at the end of 2009, China and India has floated the idea of subjecting new green technology to 'compulsory licensing'. They are supported by a group of 77 developing countries. On the card are new technologies that are needed to drive the world towards cutting carbon dioxide emissions. As most of these ideas originated from researches by advance countries, and in order to speed up the process of turning green, it is essential that these technologies do not exact a high cost for the developing countries to embrace. To be sure, the innovators of these new technologies would not like such an idea. Perhaps their governments might have to step in to subsidize some of the cost, otherwise the world could reach irreversible tipping stage.
November 27, 2009