Across China

Pop star discs

Beijing customs agents on July 2 seized 2,099 discs they said were pirated and en route to the United States and United Kingdom.

Among the discs were 429 allegedly illegal copies of live concerts featuring the late pop music star Michael Jackson.

Jackson's death last month has boosted sales of legitimate audio and video products featuring the pop star, and seem to have boosted sales of pirated products, too.

Meanwhile, more than 10 Chinese publishing houses are planning to launch instant books about Jackson, according to media reports.

IPR violations

Officials in Guangzhou, the capital city of South China's Guangdong province, handled 16 cases from last November through May involving alleged infringements of intellectual property rights (IPR) relating to the upcoming Asian Games, according to Tao Kaiyuan, director of the Intellectual Property Office of Guangdong province.

The next Asian Games will be held in Guangzhou in 2010, which officials said is resulting in more IPR-related infringement cases.

Guangzhou has issued regulations strengthening IPR protections for the upcoming games.

The government also has signed agreements with Foshan, Dongguan and Shanwei to strengthen IPR enforcement.

Tao said Guangzhou officials will soon release additional IPR regulations that specifically address protecting logos for the upcoming Asian Games.

City name case

Chinese trademark authorities, responding to a request from Tokyo, rejected applications to register eight prefectural names in Japan as brands for agricultural and other products, the Japan Patent Office reported, according to the Japan Times.

The decision reflects a change in China's stance on the registration of Japanese prefectural and city names without their consent, the newspaper reported.

The eight prefecture names that were in question are Nagano, Shizuoka, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, Kagawa, Fukuoka and Kagoshima.

An increasing number of individuals and companies in China have been trying to register Japanese prefectural and city names as brands for beverages, drugs, clothing and other products, the newspaper reported.

Prison terms for nine

The Shanghai High People's Court sentenced nine people to prison terms ranging from two years to nine years for copyright infringement.

The nine people were accused of selling 677,000 pirated discs to customers outside China from July 2003 to February 2007.

They were accused of collecting 80 million yuan in profits from the illegal enterprise.

Internet copyrights

Officials from China's Ministry of Commerce and National Copyright Administration, along with the US Patent and Trademark Office and US Copyright Office, recently met in Beijing to address copyright infringement and the Internet.

The meeting had been scheduled by the Sino-US Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade during last year's Sino-US intellectual property dialogue.

User-generated content and peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing issues were addressed at a meeting that attracted 100 participants from China, the United States, Japan and European Union countries.

New IP search tool

A new search tool for IP-related legal texts, China IP Law Search, was launched last week.

China IP Law Search is a free, bilingual collection of legal references relevant to intellectual property protection in China.

The search tool was introduced by the Ministry of Commerce and the EU-China Project on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights.

IPR MOU

China and South Korea signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding promising strategic cooperation on trademark and intellectual property rights (IPR) protections between the two countries.

The agreement states that the two countries will exchange information on IPR laws and regulations, co-host international IPR activities and organize training programs on IPR policies and trends.

Video games

Chinese online video game firm Changyou.com Ltd filed a lawsuit against the online video game site Kylin (www.70yx.com) for alleged copyright infringement.

The lawsuit filed by Changyou.com states that Kylin's CEO and chief game developers were its former employees.

Changyou.com asked for compensation of 1 yuan.

Kylin, in a statement, said the accusations were "groundless" and were designed to damage its reputation.

Changyou.com is a subsidiary of the major Chinese Internet portal Sohu.com.

IPR caseload

Courts at all levels across China handled more than 3,300 criminal cases involving alleged intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement.

Actual infringement was found by the courts in nearly 1,000 cases, according to a workshop on IPR criminal jurisdiction recently held in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province.

The seminar was attended by more than 80 people, including government officials, judges and deputies from multinational companies.

Editor's note: The IPR Special is sponsored by the State Intellectual Property Office and published by China Business Weekly. To contact the Intellectual Property Office, the IPR Special hotlines are 8610-64995422 or 8610-64995826, and the e-mail address is ipr@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily 07/13/2009 page9)