Vice President of European Commission and EC member in charge of Competition Policy Affairs, Joaquin Almunia pointed out that the signing of this memorandum of understanding will further enhance the good relationship between the EU and China's anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies and has injected new impetus for Sino-EU cooperation.

Under the memorandum of understanding, two sides will carry out exchanges in the following aspects: exchange on the progress of competition legislation and law enforcement experience, exchange experience in promoting the operation of completion law enforcement agencies of both sides, exchange on multilateral competition and cooperation activities, exchange experiences on how to enhance legal consciousness of companies and the public regarding Competition and Anti-monopoly Law, exchange views and experiences on the coordination mechanism of the China-EU technical cooperation in the field of competition law. If the law enforcement activities of the two sides involve the same or related matters, the two sides can exchange non-confidential opinions on the matters, exchange experience and point of view and even directly coordinate their enforcement activities respectively.

Sino-ROK FTA Fifth Preparatory Work Meeting will be held in China, Ministry of Commerce of P.R.C Yu, Jianhua (Assistant to Minister) and Choi Kyung-lim of ROK will attend the meeting as chief representatives of the two countries.

The severity of IPR Infringement and counterfeiting crimes relates to dereliction of duty and favoritism of some of the staff of state institutions. In response to this situation, Procuratorate attached particular importance to the investigation and handling of related duty crimes. From January to September this year, China's Procuratorate according to law decided to arrest 9 suspects indulging production and sales of fake and shoddy goods and initiated prosecution against 23 persons. China's national Procuratorate decided to arrest 17 people and prosecute 64 suspects suspected for crime of not transferred criminal case involving practice of favoritism; and decided to arrest 86 persons and prosecute 163 suspects suspected for helping criminals to avoid punishment, among them, infringement and counterfeiting accounted for a considerable proportion.

The person in charge of Investigation and Supervision Office of the Supreme People's Procuratorate of PRC said that China is in rapid development stage of economy and intellectual property legal system and working mechanism needs to be further improved. Procuratorate will further establish and consummate working mechanism and take great efforts to bring criminal justice for IPR protection to a new level.

Tian, Lipu pointed out that patent examiners’ work is full of challenges, they need to constantly understand innovation activities and continuously expand their knowledge. In addition, examiner also needs to communicate with counterparts in other countries and deepen their mutual understanding in order to improve the quality of patent examination. Seminar of Patent Examiners of Five Patent Offices provides a platform for patent examiners from five patent offices to learn from each other by communication and interaction, and thus improves the quality and efficiency of patent examination so as to achieve the purpose of enhancing understanding and mutual trust.

As one of the key activities under Five Patent Offices cooperation basic program “common training policy”, the Fourth Seminar of Patent Examiners of Five Patent Offices is initiated by "Patent Personnel Education department of SIPO and jointly held by International Cooperation Department, Examination Business Management Department and China Intellectual Property Training Center. During the seminar, representatives of Patent Examiners of Five Patent Offices will discuss four topics including retrieve, prior art, novelty and creativity.

In addition, CPCC (Copyright Protection Center of China) recently released Analysis Report on Software Copyright Registration in 2011, which can serve as a reference for macro-control and decision-making of government administration and provides the basis for domestic and international software business decisions and market analysis as well as provide guidance for banks and other financial institutions to choose investment objects. Commissioned by SIPO, CPCC also compiled Analysis Report on Software Copyright Mortgage Registration in 2011, which analyzes the constraints on environment of software copyright mortgage financing policy and on mortgage financing; and brings forward relevant proposals on developing software copyright mortgage financing. Therefore, this report objectively and comprehensively reflects basic status of software copyright mortgage financing in China.

Related statistics show that by the end of September this year, there are 830 patent agencies doing patent agency business, among which 812 patent agencies have submitted electronic applications, 654 patent agencies have realized electronic application rate of 100%; there are 8 provinces and cities have achieved electronic application rate of over 80%; patent agencies in 21 provinces, autonomous regions and/or municipalities have realized electronic application rate of 95%.

Among them, the case of trade secrets and patent infringement dispute between Ashland Group and Beijing Response-Chem Specialty Chemical Technologies Co., Ltd. represented by Li Yongbo and Kong Fanwen from Unitalen Attorneys at Law was elected as one of the annual "Top Ten" Case. Other elected cases include trademark infringement disputes between Apple Inc. and Proview Technology Co., Ltd., etc.

Ashland case highlights the growth in China courts’ efforts in intellectual property protection and professional expertise in trial. Tthe courts accepting Ashland cases, Suzhou Intermediate People's Court and Beijing First Intermediate People's Court exhibited excellent professional expertise and dedication spirit.

In addition, the case also demonstrated the expertise of Beijing Unitalen Attorneys at Law for difficult and complicated cases. In this case, Ashland Company’s in-house counsel and technical staff, United States outside attorneys and attorneys from Unitalen Attorneys at Law formed a professional litigation team, members of which are in close cooperation and full communication with each other, and thereby provided an important guarantee for finding the relevant facts and achieving a satisfactory outcome of the case.

This forum brought together multi-faceted experts’ opinions of judges, patent consultants, patent appraiser, senior patent and trademark attorneys, providing suggestion on the direction for the company IPR development in global market, enabling the company to focus on IP mapping, consulting and strategic development with basic IP insight.

With the rising of China’s market, Chinese enterprises showed a more pronounced internationalization trends and continuously expand their market and services outward. In this economic context, IP has become a required course of Chinese enterprises: how to map reasonable patents and trademarks overseas, how to make IPR strategy in match with company development strategy, as well as how the company benefit from IPR consulting and other emerging issues. It has crucial importance for the development of enterprises.

At this time, we specially invited judges from the Supreme People's Court of China to make an in-depth presentation for nowadays patent litigation hotspot and difficult problems, and deeply analyze some problems in details in layman's language in combination with trial practice and thereby referred to many countermeasures for enterprise in case of being sued.