At the 26th session of the 12th Standing Committee of the National People 's Congress, the draft amendment of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law was tabled for discussion. This will be the first revision of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law for nearly 24 years.

The current Anti-Unfair Competition Law came into effect on December 1, 1993, with a total of 5 chapters and 33 articles. There are 35 articles in the draft amendment in total.

According to the agenda, the Standing Committee will be divided in groups to review the draft amendment and propose revisions to improve the draft. (Source: Legal Network)

Recently, the Chinese National Copyright Administration published the statistics of 2016 copyright registration nationwide.

According to the report, the total amount of copyright registration in China reached 2,007,698, marking a 2 million milestone, of which there are 1,599,597 registrations of works, 407,774 registrations of computer software, and 327 copyright pledges, with an increase of 22.33% compared to 1,641,166 in 2015. (Source: National Copyright Administration)

In recent years, China Customs has been strengthening international cooperation for the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), and implementing systemized fights against cross-border trade involving infringement, effectively curbing the proliferation of transnational illegal activities.

According to the Deputy Director of China General Administration of Customs, the international cooperation on IPR protection currently carried out by China Customs is performed on three levels: 1) established cooperation with more than 130 countries and regions, with more than 190 cooperation agreements signed, including the special IPR enforcement memorandums with the United States, the European Union, Russia, Japan, South Korea and other related countries and regions; 2) actively participate in the IP affairs undergoing within the framework of the major multilateral organizations, e.g. World Intellectual Property Organization, Interpol (International Police) and Shanghai Cooperation Organizations; and 3) strenghen communication and cooperation with the IPR industry, and concluded cooperation memorandums with International Trademark Association, the American Film Association, as well as other international trade associations and civil bodies.

China Customs’promotion of IPR protection has been highly recognized by the international community.The Global Anti-Counterfeiting Alliance and Interpol had honored China Customs with "International Intellectual Property Crime Investigation Cooperation Award" and "The World's Best Anti-Counterfeit Institution Award " respectively. (Source: Economic Information Daily)

Taizhou Suzhong Antenna Group Co., Ltd (“Suzhong”). is a professional antenna manufacturer, who claims itself to be the largest antenna manufacturer in China. Jiang Xiaoping, the legal representative of Suzhong, is the patentee of ZL 200710019425.7 "shark fin antenna" patent (“Plaintiff”). Based on their antenna series patents, Jiang Xiaoping and Suzhong initiated a numbers of lawsuits against domestic and foreign car companies, which were either decided in their favor or settled after the defendants paid royalty fee.

June 2014, Jiang Xiaoping filed a lawsuit at Nanjing Intermediate People's Court against Chongqing Lifan Automobile Sales Co., Ltd. (“Lifan”) and its distributor (jointly the defendants) for patent infringement,pleading the court to order the defendants stop manufacturing and selling "shark fin antenna" products and pay a compensation of 1 million RMB yuan, later increased to 10 million yuan.

During the trial, Lifan filed an invalidation petition against the patent at issue. The Patent Reexamination Board acknowledged existence of different technical features between the claims of the patent at issue and the prior art and accordingly sustained the patent at issue.

However, the differences between the alleged "shark fin antenna" and the patent at issue happen to be the differences claimed by the Plaintiff during the invalidation procedure. In other words, the technical features of the alleged “shark fin antenna”are identical with those of the prior art, but different from the patent at issue. Lifan tried to defend themselves by claiming the doctrine of estoppels but was not supported by the court. The first-instance verdict ordered Lifan and its antenna supplier stop infringement and jointly compensate the plaintiff 2 million RMB yuan.

Dissatisfied with the verdict, Lifan entrusted Unitalen to file an appeal at Jiangsu Higher Court. After holding two hearings and reviewing every focus of the case, the court decided that, because the patentee made restrictive statement to its claims, which was not explicitly denied by the Patent Reexamination Board, Lifan’s defense based on the doctrine of estoppels that the alleged product does not fall within the protection scope of the patent at issue was justified.

Comment

Invalid declaration is the most commonly used defense in a patent infringement ligitation. In addition to invalidating the patent at issue, another important purpose of an invliadation procedure is to force the owner of a patent with low inventiveness to decide between “maintaining patent” and “winning litigation”. Once the patentee’s response in the invalidation proceeding infringer on the independent claims gives room to the principle of estoppel, the alleged infringer will have an assuring win of the litigation case.

Recently, Managing Intellectual Property (MIP), a global authoritative IP magazine, published the “2017 IP Star” trademark practice ranking. Unitalen is listed as Tier 1 Chinese law firm in the areas of “trademark prosecution” and “trademark litigation”.

On the afternoon of February 24th, the 2017 INTA Pre-Annual Meeting Reception jointly hosted by INTA (International Trademark Association), Unitalen Intellectual Property Agency Co., Ltd. and Unitalen Attorneys at Law was successfully held in Beijing. Representative from INTA Singapore Office, Co-Chairman of INTA China Global Advisory Council, INTA members, scholars, lawyers, and representatives from over 50 businesses and IP offices attended the event.

The reception started with a seminar on the hotspots of current China IP issues and strategy analysis. An IP court judge was invited to introduce the new development on trademark related administrative litigations; professor and director of Zhongguancun IP Strategy Research Institute analyzed and shared his views on trademark development; and Unitalen lawyer gave analysis on internet related unfair competition cases.