Good morning. Welcome come to this week’s IP Cafe. Here’s Fino. Now let’s take a cup of coffee and enjoy the following five minutes with me.
Let’s quick browse the headlines:
· IP Court Helps Solve Patent Disputes Quickly
· Minister Assures Measures to Boost FDI
· Business Leaders Make Suggestions for This Year's Two Sessions
· US Blacklisting of Chinese High-Tech Firms Opposed
· WIPO Introduces New Business Service That Provides Evidence of an Intellectual Asset's Existence
In a recent report released by the Supreme People’s Court, the accomplishment of China’s Intellectual Property industry was huge.
In 2019, Chinese courts concluded a total of 418,000 IP-related cases, giving stronger support to IP rights holders and increasing punishments for violators, the work report showed.
Among these cases, the new IP Court received 1,684 patent-related cases in the past year, of which about 99 percent came from intermediate people's courts, mainly covering medicines, telecommunication, machinery, agriculture and forestry, according to Luo Dongchuan, vice-president of the Supreme People's Court
The amount of compensation raised by litigants in three of these disputes was over 100 million yuan ($14 million), while the figure in 17 others also exceeded 10 million yuan, the statistics showed.
"Such numbers tell us that patents have been emerging in more and various aspects of people's livelihoods, and are influencing our lives and the country's development," Luo said.
While shortening the time to hear patent cases by leaping over courts at the provincial level, the new IP Court also supported judges in identifying cases with complicated technical items by establishing a talent database and sharing system with lower courts, according to Luo.
With the new Foreign Investment Law of China implemented from the beginning of 2020, China will provide for greater promotion and protection of foreign investment as well as enhanced regulatory transparency. That was reiterated by the Minster during the Two Sessions.
China will further relax market access, shorten the negative list and build high level opening-up platforms, especially in its pilot free trade zones, to put foreign direct investment growth and exports on a firmer footing, a senior official said on May 25.
Growth of nonfinancial sector foreign direct investment on the Chinese mainland surged 11.8 percent year-on-year in April, compared with a decline of 14.1 percent in March, showing that global companies' confidence has continued to grow in the country despite the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data released by the Ministry of Commerce.
Total FDI inflows into China fell 6.1 percent on a yearly basis to 286.55 billion yuan ($40.34 billion) during the first four months of this year. The decline was 4.7 percentage points narrower than the level seen in the first quarter.
Among the Two Sessions, ministers were proposing for constructive suggestions for the various aspects of the society, businesswomen Dong Mingzhu is among one of them.
Gree Electric Chairperson Dong Mingzhu this year made proposals in three major areas, namely the innovation capability in the manufacturing industry, protection of intellectual property rights and patents, and threshold of individual income tax.
Having been deputy to the National People's Congress for four consecutive years, Dong said she paid more attention to the social and economic development beyond the enterprise's development and considers more on how to truly reflect the greatest concerns of the Chinese people.
For some of the Chinese technology enterprises, they may face a tough road in terms of doing business with the US.
The US government's decision to add 33 Chinese technology companies and institutions to its "Entity List" will hurt the interests of the suppliers in the United States and impede international technology cooperation, especially with the novel coronavirus pandemic triggering a global economic downturn, experts said.
The US Department of Commerce placed the companies and institutions, including cybersecurity company Qihoo 360 Technology, artificial intelligence start-up Cloud-Walk Technology and Beijing Computational Science Research Center, on a list barring them from buying components from US companies without government approval.
Qihoo 360 said in a statement that it firmly opposed the decision and the US Department of Commerce's politicization of business activities and technology research and development.
The company said the US government's sanction, which attempts to weaken China's cybersecurity defense capabilities, will only benefit organizations involved in attacking computer systems and have a negative impact on global cybersecurity.
"Although being added to the Entity List will cause some problems for our business, it won't have a significant influence on our daily operations, nor will it interrupt our commitment to providing security protection for customers," the statement said.
WIPO Introduces New Business Service That Provides Evidence of an Intellectual Asset's Existence
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched a new online business service, WIPO PROOF, that provides tamper-proof evidence of the existence at a point in time of any digital file, including data sets, in any format.
WIPO PROOF complements the Organization’s existing intellectual property (IP) systems by helping innovators and creators take verifiable actions to safeguard the many outputs of their work on the journey from concept to development to commercialization.
Innovative and creative activities in today’s increasingly digitized world are often global and collaborative, producing a vast array of data files containing valuable content that can easily fall prey to misuse or misappropriation. This content can range from trade secrets to scripts, musical scores and other creative works, to research results, large data sets, artificial intelligence algorithms, or any business record.
Those for this week’s news. For more IP events in China, please visit www.chinaiptoday.com. See you next Saturday and enjoy the nice weekend.
