Across China: Beijing

Patent applications up

China had the world's sixth largest number of international patent applications in 2008, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The country overtook the United Kingdom in the ratings, following the United States, Japan, Germany, South Korea and France, according to the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO).

China filed 6,089 patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in 2008, up 11.9 percent over previous year, according to SIPO statistics.

Chinese firms played an active role in domestic patent applications. Half of the 194,000 patent applications for inventions were handed in by local companies last year, said SIPO Director Tian Lipu.

About 40,500 companies submitted patent applications last year, up 23.9 percent over 2007.

Huawei ranks first

Huawei Technologies, China's leading telecommunications equipment manufacturer, last year ranked No 1 in the world for the first time in terms of the number of its Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent applications, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Huawei filed a total of 1,737 applications in 2008.

Huawei was followed by Panasonic, Philips Electronics, Toyota and Robert Bosch GMBH.

International PCT filings totaled 164,000 last year, an increase of 2.4 percent year-on-year, WIPO said.

Auto dispute

German bus and coach manufacturer Neoplan Bus GmbH recently won an intellectual property lawsuit against a Chinese auto firm.

The Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court ordered automotive group Zonda and its subsidiary Yancheng Zhongwei Passenger Coach Co Ltd and Beijing Zhongtong Xinhua Automobile Sales Company to pay 21 million yuan to Neoplan Bus GmbH.

The German firm filed the lawsuit in 2006, accusing Zonda of copying Neoplan's "Starliner" coach to make its "A9" model.

The court ordered Zonda to stop manufacturing the pirated model and prohibited its sale.

"Zonda could not provide enough evidence to prove that the Zonda A9 was a result of its own research," according to a press release.

Neoplan applied for a patent for its Starliner coach in China in 2004, the company said.

Software spat

Microsoft is seeking nearly 500,000 yuan in compensation from a Chinese IT company, accused of using pirated Microsoft software, Shanghai Daily reported.

The US company told the Shanghai No 2 Intermediate People's Court that Shanghai Dare Global Information Industry Co Ltd, a maker of set-top boxes, had been using pirated copies of nine kinds of its software products.

Microsoft wanted Dare Global to stop using the copies and to destroy them.

Ma Yuanchao, Microsoft's lawyer, told the court that Shanghai copyright bureau officers carried out spot checks at the office of Dare Global in March 2006 and found copies of pirated software being used. Ma said the company used the pirated software for commercial use because it was used in the workplace for the company's daily work.

Dare Global denied it was still using pirated software. It had taken measures to correct its mistake after the bureau's visit, its lawyer said.

By August 2008, all software used by Dare Global was genuine, said the Shanghai-based firm, providing invoices to prove it had bought legal software.

Dare Global also disputed the number of pirated copies detailed in the lawsuit. It said only 22 sets of Windows XP Home and 53 sets of Office Professional Edition 2000 were pirated.

The court did not announce a verdict.

Top 10 IPR cases

The 2008 annual report on intellectual property rights in China was recently released by Peking University School of Journalism and Communication. The report was sponsored by Japanese electrical products company Epson.

The report listed the following top 10 IPR cases of 2008: Microsoft's black screen incident; the release of China's National Intellectual Property Strategy Outline; the "Tomato Garden" piracy case; Olympic intellectual property rights protection; karaoke copyright litigation; the "Cabernet" wine controversy; Baidu MP3 search disputes; the Wanfang infringement case; CeBIT confiscations; and the Chinese Patent Law amendment.

(China Daily 02/16/2009 page9)