IN BRIEF (Page 9)

Software piracy case

Superior People's Court of Shandong province recently handed down a final verdict against Qingdao Ultimate Transportation Equipment Co, Ltd. (Ultimate Co) for unauthorized installation and use of computer software. The court allowed Ultimate Co to withdraw its appeal and in turn upheld the original conviction imposed by the lower court, which asked Ultimate Co to stop infringement, delete pirated software, and pay a compensation totaling 1.72 million yuan to Microsoft, Parametric Technology Corp and Autodesk. So far, this verdict records the highest financial penalty among China's foreign-related copyright infringement cases involving end-user software piracy, reflecting the trend that organizational end-user software piracy could trigger stringent legal penalties in the future.

Qingdao Municipality Copyright Administration conducted a legal enforcement inspection in the premises of Ultimate Co in December 2005 after receiving complaints from software proprietors such as Autodesk and Microsoft. Among those computers randomly chosen for inspection, nine sets of Windows, nine sets of Office, eight sets of PTC Pro/E Wildfire, 14 sets of AutoCAD software were found in installation. It was confirmed that these software had been illegally installed without licenses from Microsoft, Parametric Technology Corp and Autodesk.

After failing to achieve settlement with the infringer, three proprietors filed lawsuit to Qingdao Intermediate People's Court in July 2007, demanding compensation from Ultimate Co for its infringement. Qingdao Municipality Copyright Administration had imposed administrative penalty against Ultimate Co. The intermediate court held a public hearing on the case in January 2008 and ruled such conviction after nearly three month's legal procedure. Shortly after, Ultimate Co appealed to Superior People's Court of Shandong province, but eventually withdrew the appeal. The original verdict stands.

IPR students awarded

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) recently gave awards to three Chinese students for their creativity in three Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Public Awareness Competitions, Xinhua News Agency reports.

"Protecting IPR is the responsibility of everyone. Only in this way can we effectively protect our creativity," says Yang Tingting, 21, a student at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. She won a China-wide short video protection competition on the theme Respect Copyrights, Stay Away from Piracy.

Yang's flash animation "I want to buy legitimate" features three shop owners who only sell pirated DVDs, forcing the customer to wonder whether he needs to buy pirated goods.

There has been an increasing awareness of IPR protection in China, from the government to citizens, says Clark T Randt, US Ambassador to China, at the awards ceremony.

The other two award recipients were Liang Jinwei, a junior student from the Guangxi University for Nationalities, whose one-minute video short depicted the responses of young students to a teacher's questions about the meaning of the word "steal", and Xu Huabin, a 9-year-old girl who won an anti-piracy campaign organized by the MPAA and the China Association for Educational Technology.

China's leading user-generated content video-sharing sites are cooperating with the MPAA to fight online piracy, a growing threat to domestic and international copyright owners.

The awards ceremony was part of the seventh Annual Ambassador's Roundtable Discussion on IPR in China, a high-level government and industry forum.

Getting tough on IP cases

Shanghai courts will carry out a series of activities this month to strengthen judicial protection of intellectual property rights, Shanghai Daily reports.

The Shanghai Higher People's Court says that the two intermediate courts and Pudong and Huangpu district courts, which have special intellectual property courts, will hold public hearings and announce verdicts in a batch of IP cases this month.

Local courts have handled 9,765 IP civil cases and 681 IP criminal cases since 1994, according to official figures.

Hainan provincial court system will also launch an IP judicial protection month with the theme of judicial protection and innovation encouragement from November 3 to 27, according to Hainan Provincial Higher People's Court.

The Intermediate People's Courts that accept IP dispute cases will hold open court; they will invite NPC deputies, CPPCC members, industrial association and the public to sit in on the hearings and ask their advices and suggestions on enhancing IP trial work. They will try a batch of influential IP cases and open the effective adjudicative documents online.

The courts, which have the jurisdiction over IP cases in Hainan, are Hainan Provincial Higher People's Court, Haikou, Yangpu and Sanya intermediate people's courts.

IP infringement in OEM

The bureau of industry and commerce and courts in Zhejiang province recently held a workshop on trademark infringement of foreign OEM (original equipment manufacturing).

The workshop explained the OEM law attributes, trademark utilization, and the factors for judging trademark infringement. The court and bureau of industry and commerce will have further deliberation on related issues.

OEM exports play an important role in the economy of Zhejiang, which is a major manufacturing base of China. Trademark infringement disputes caused by OEM have kept rising in recent years. Owing to the various forms of OEM, the court and department of industry and commerce still have divergent opinions on how to identify trademark violation involved in OEM.

This workshop aims to strengthen law enforcement cooperation and unifying law enforcement standard.

(China Daily 11/17/2008 page9)