The 15th China (Wuxi) International Design Expo took place this year on 25-27 May in Wuxi, Jiangsu, China. IP Key China, in partnership with the China National Intellectual Property Administration and Intellectual Property Publishing House organised a one-day workshop on the margins of the Expo. Expert presentations and roundtable discussions took place concerning various aspects of design rights protection, enforcement and best practices.

The Fourth Revision of the Trademark Law in China was adopted in April 2019 and will come into force on 1 November 2019.  IP Key China, in cooperation with the China National Intellectual Property Administration organised this one-day workshop to discuss the latest changes in the law, outline its practical implications as well as address some of the on-going challenges. Given the challenges related to bad-faith trademark applications and the new provisions for tackling those, several presentations and discussions focused on this particular area.

China now files more patents than any other country in the world, including the U.S. In part, this has been fuelled by a government drive to encourage universities and technology firms to file. Yet whilst mobilising state policy to increase the quantity of applications has not been a challenge for China, the quality of its patent enforcement system has not fully kept up with this push for innovation. In view of the above, the Supreme People’s Court of the PRC (SPC) continues to make regulatory and procedural reforms that are closely observed by EU stakeholders.

With the support and organisation by IP Key, a Chinese delegation of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the PRC (SPP) and Local/Provincial prosecutors visited the EU in May for a ten day study visit in Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain respectively.

Together with CPVO, MARA and NFGA, in cooperation with the UPOV, IP Key held seminars in Beijing which focused on the international cooperation on the “take-over” of Distinctness, Uniformity, Stability (DUS) technical reports and on the implementation of Farm Saved Seeds and Essentially Derived Varieties (FSS and EDV).

IP Key LA held on March 28th and 29th in Lima, Peru, the "Seminar on Geographical Indications and Trade Marks: Prospects for the future", oriented to the Andean Community, with the presence of invited experts from Europe and Latin America. These covered issues related to the EU's policy on GI, the protection of GIs in the EU and abroad, the relationship between GIs and trade marks, and the protection of a GI in the registration procedure of a trademark, in addition to infractions and observance of GIs.