China

Between May 9 and 17, 2016 IP Key organised a set of peer to peer exchanges for a delegation of 12 officials of the Legislative Affairs Commission at the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (in short, LAC), that traveled to Belgium, Finland and Sweden.

The Chinese official delegation was led by the Director of the Civil Law Department and vice-headed by the Director of the Economic Law Department of the LAC.

In the context of the EU-China Action Plan (2014-2017) on IPR Customs Enforcement of IPR, IP Key is going to co-organise a training in Europe for 10 customs officers from different ports and airports in China from November 16 to 26, 2015.

IP Key and the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC) will be co-hosting a roundtableon emerging issues relevant to the protection of copyrights in the digital environment and the development of a prosperous and balanced digital market for cultural and creative industries. The roundtable, which is to take place on 2 December 2015 in Shanghai, will serve as a platform for Chinese and European government agencies, courts, industry associations, collective management organisations and academia to discuss the legislative updates, licensing models as well as copyright enforcements in

In an effort to provide more awareness to EU stakeholders about China’s patent invalidation system, the Patent Re-Examination Board (PRB) of China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and IP Key Project launched the key PRB cases activity. The first step of this activity was to choose PRB cases based upon their representativeness of key lessons/considerations European industry should take into account in their patent management strategies in China.

In the context of the EU-China Action Plan (2014-2017) on IPR Customs Enforcement, IP Key is going to co-organise an event on cross-agency cooperation on the investigation of serious IP infringement cases in Alicante, Spain from 24 to 26 February 2016. The aim of the event is to strengthen EU-China interaction and cooperation between customs and other law enforcement agencies and authorities to stop production and wind up distribution networks.

The workshop held on the 20- 21 June bought together academics from both the EU and Chinese universities, to discuss the development of an EU-China IP Research Network.

Academia cooperation was highlighted as a key element in the  Memorandum of Understanding on reinforcing the EU-China IP Dialogue Mechanism, which was signed (with Ms. Cecilia Malmström, Commissioner for Trade, and Mr. GAO Hucheng, Minister of Commerce of China) on the sidelines of the EU-China Summit, on 29 June 2015 in Brussels. 

The Third Yearly Action Plan (YAP3) of IP Key for 2016 has been endorsed on 19 January 2016 after close consultation with all project stakeholders, including 15 Chinese agencies and ministries under the coordination of MOFCOM. The project’s third action plan is ambitious and, as in the past, continues to cover all areas of IP. Areas of intervention include trademarks and unfair competition; patents and innovation policies; designs; copyrights and related rights; trade secrets; geographical indications; and enforcement among others.

In 2014 IP Key and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce facilitated exchanges between European and Chinese experts on trade mark best practices. Building on the outcome of such exchanges, a number of areas requiring further investigation were identified.

Expert exchanges therefore continued in 2015, in view of the implementation of recently revised Chinese Trade Mark Law.

Protection of Well-known Trade Marks:  finding a common rationale between the EU and China

Legal Issues Related to Events Broadcasting