On that day, the two parties signed three documents, i.e., Summary of the 4th EPO-SIPO Conference of the Heads of the EPO and the SIPO, Annual Work Plan for EPO-SIPO Co-operation in 2011, and Agreement on Electronic Exchange of Priority Documents Between the SIPO and the EPO. Besides, the two parties held talks on further strengthening of intellectual property protection cooperation, specific projects in future cooperation, etc.

When interviewed by journalists, Mr. TIAN Lipu said that the conference yielded many fruits, and China and EPO have common understanding in a plurality of fields related to intellectual property protection. He particularly mentioned that one of the important aspects of the consensus reached by the two parties this time is to provide a great number of Chinese patent documents to European users, so as to bring the current innovation level of China into the knowledge of the users, especially enterprises and innovators, from different countries. Moreover, the two parties will further prompt information spreading and communication between each other by means of a cooperation project relating to “Machine Translation”.

It is reported that the annual number of patent applications received by the State Intellectual Property Office presents a general trend of doubling per five years: in 1996 the annual number reached 100 thousand for the first time, then 200 thousand in 2001, 500 thousand in 2006, and 1 million in 2010, a brand new step.

The Auction Fair was collaboratively held by China Technology Exchange, ICT Computing Technology Transfer Center (Haidian, Beijing), Beijing Guoxinxingye Auction Ltd., and Unitalen Attorneys at Law upon entrustment by the Institute of Computing Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In the Auction Fair, about 90 patents related to more than ten technical application fields such as intelligence and information, wireless communication, network technology, information safety, internet of things, audio and video processing and so on were publicly auctioned. In the Auction Fair, transactions were concluded for 28 patents, amounting to approximate 40% of the total, and the transaction volume amounted to RMB 2568 thousand.

The Auction Fair changes the conventional mode of prompting patent conversion mainly through administrative measures, and introduces a transaction mode of market-oriented pricing. The Auction Fair is a new attempt in the area of intellectual property transfer aiming to convert intellectual property to productivity more efficiently, and is also the first useful attempt of market-oriented circulation of domestic intangible assets.

Jiang Zengwei, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Commerce and Director of the Leading Group of National Special Initiatives said that special initiatives had achieved preliminary results since its inception in the previous month.

Jiang Zengwei introduced that, in the next step, all the regions and authorities would strengthen the cooperation and coordination, firmly supervise and urge the implementation of all the deployments of the plans on special initiatives. He disclosed that in the near future they would identify some inter-departmental and inter-regional major cases and key cases, and organize the relevant authorities to supervise and handle such cases.

In addition, the laws and regulations will be perfected. Jiang Zengwei disclosed that, the Supreme Court, the Supreme Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security will in the near future jointly promulgate the Opinion on Several Issues of Application of Laws in the Trial of Criminal Cases Concerning Infringement on Intellectual Property Rights, resolving difficult issues in the application of laws in the trial of cases concerning intellectual property rights.

Cui Xuefeng said that from 2006 to October 2010, the First Intermediate Court had in total accepted 2,691 foreign-related cases concerning intellectual property rights, among which 55.2% had supported the whole or part of the foreign parties’ claims in the litigation, ordering indemnification in favor of foreign parties in a total amount of more than RMB 48 million.

Before this, in the case of trademark infringement and unfair competition between Google Information Technology (China) Co., Ltd as the Plaintiff under the authorization of Google (USA), a famous search engine service provider, and Beijing Google Science and Technology Co., Ltd., the First Intermediate Court determined that the unauthorized use by Beijing Google Science and Technology Co., Ltd. of “Google” in its company name reflected its subjective intention and resulted in confusion by the relevant public, thus breaching the principle of fairness and bona fide as well as the universally accepted commercial morality, and constituting unfair competition. For this, Beijing Google Science and Technology Co., Ltd. were adjudicated to cease the use of and to change its company name, and the changed name should not include "Google", and an indemnification of RMB 100,000 was ordered.

In recent years, the pledge of copyright is not only an important method by which the copyrighters exercise copyrights, but a major measure for the copyrighters to carry out debt guarantee and financing. According to the data, from January 2000 to August 2010, China Copyright Protection Center conducted 934 registrations of pledge of copyrights, among which 747 are those concerning the pledge of computer software copyrights and 187 are those concerning the pledge of general works’ copyrights.

On September 23, 1996, China formulated, promulgated and implemented the Registration Measures of Contract of Pledge of Copyrights (“Measures”), which is an important regulation implementing the relevant stipulations concerning the pledge of rights in the Guarantee Law of the People’s Republic of China, and is an important basis for formalizing the registration of contracts of pledge of copyrights. Since its promulgation, the Measures had played an important role in guiding market bodies to operate copyright assets and promote the development of cultural industry, but also encountered some new issues and new situations. Yu Cike, Director of the Laws and Regulations Department of the National Copyright Administration considered that this time’s promulgation of the Registration Measures of Pledge of Copyrights was for the purposes of further perfecting the registration of pledge of copyrights and providing systematic support to the commercialization of copyrights, which also met the requirements for implementation of the Property Right Law and the Copyright Law, and for implementation of the National Essentials of Strategy of Intellectual Property Rights.

Case Review:

On August 20, 2004, Ragdoll Limited filed an application for cancellation of registration of the trademark in dispute. On November 23, 2009, the TRAB made a ruling that the trademark in dispute be cancelled. On January 12, 2010, Quanzhou Tianxian Baobao Food Co., Ltd., the plaintiff, instituted an administrative litigation with the First Intermediate People’s Court of Beijing Municipality.

Two lawyers from Unitalen, Zhang Yazhou and Gui Qingkai, accepted the entrustment by the plaintiff and presented the opinions to the Court. It was argued that the application of the clauses of absolute grounds by the TRAB to cancel the trademark in dispute for breaching the principle of good faith was inappropriate, and the ruling of cancellation of the trademark in dispute was based on misunderstanding and mis-application of the laws, so the decision made by TRAB should be canceled in order to protect the plaintiff’s legal rights.

Based on facts and the parties’ claims and arguments, the Court determined that the TRAB’s ruling on the dispute, which held that the registration of the trademark in dispute violated public order and moral on the grounds that such registration breached the principle of good faith and damaged Ragdoll's legal rights and benefits, mistakenly applied the relevant provisions of the Trademark Law, and should be corrected. The Court held that the ruling by the TRAB on the dispute be cancelled, and ordered that the TRAB make decision anew.

The TRAB and the third party, Ragdoll Limited, were dissatisfied with the judgment by the First Intermediate People’s Court of Beijing Municipality and lodged an appeal to the Higher People’s Court of Beijing.

(*Tianxian Baobao is the Chinese Pinyin for Teletubbies.)

Société Civile du Chateau Lafite-Rothschild is a world famous wine manufacturer. For over one hundred years, LAFITE, a top-class wine brand owned by the plaintiff has been enjoying high recognition, and as a wine manufacturer, Société Civile du Chateau Lafite-Rothschild also has long enjoyed a good reputation. The reasons for Hunan’s Intermediate Court to choose the case to be webcasted are not only that the case is a typical one in the areas of trademark infringement and unfair competition, but also that the plaintiff, as a world famous brand, was focused on for its efforts to protect its rights.

In recent years, the internet has been drawing the judicial system and the general public closer. As a manner of open court trial, webcasting simultaneously makes the process of court trial public to the net citizens by means of texts and images, and the general public may “be present” as an observer via internet. During the webcasting process of the case, a lot of net citizens paid much attention to the court trial, communicating with the guests and the judges by means of leaving messages and asking questions. Smooth webcasting and interactive questions and answers not only supervise the court’s trial, but also protecte the parties’ legal rights and interests, and make the trial being further transparent and open.