China

Meeting with EU Industry and IP attachés from EU Member States

On the occasion of the Official Launch of the New EU-China Activity-Based Cooperation in Intellectual Property in Beijing on 16 January 2014, IP Key convened a meeting with representatives of European industry and European Union Member States with the participation of Mr. António Campinos, President of the European Union Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), implementing agency of the IP Key.

The integration of design data from the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) into OHIM's Designview database is being carried out as part of the IP Key Yearly Action Plan for 2014.

In close cooperation and consultation with one another, experts from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) and OHIM are jointly undertaking a technical feasibility study examining the potential integration of SAIC's trademark data into TMview.

Infringements of IPR and, particularly, counterfeiting and piracy, are a ceaselessly growing phenomenon, which nowadays has an international dimension, representing a serious threat to national economies that appears to be more and more linked to transnational organized crime.

Counterfeiting is still wrongly considered by public opinion as a “victim-less” crime, while the impact of IPR infringements on legal economy and the role of international organized criminal organizations is widely underestimated also by policy makers, not only in China.

IP Key facilitated the participation of two participants from the SAIC to a workshop addressed to non-EU offices which have integrated IT tools. The Chinese participants were involved only in the workshop session dedicated to TMclass as it is the only tool which the SAIC has integrated this far, in particular regarding data set management in the Terminology Maintenance Console (TMC).

As of 14 September 2015, the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO), the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have made their industrial design data available to the Designview tool, a searchable database for IP users set up by the EU's IP office OHIM (Office for the Harmonisation in the Internal Market).

On the 24th of August, IP Key met with 15 key Chinese agencies dealing with IP issues to discuss the Yearly Action Action Plan for 2016 (YAP3).  In the meeting Benoit Missone gave an update of the activities carried out  between IP Key and  Chinese agencies and Chinese agencies had the opportunity to comment and give suggestions for future activties.

The YAP process started in July when an email was sent to EU stakeholders to solicit feedback.  YAP3 will be carried out over six months as IP Key will wrap up in June 2016 after three  successful years of cooperation.

The third IP Café was held in partnership with South China University of Technology and focused on Court Enforcement of Trade Secrets and Unfair Competition Law. IP Key and SCUT brought together key experts from the European Union and China, and asked them to provide insights on the judicial protection of trade secrets and anti-unfair competition law in the light of the new scenario of Chinese IP Courts. Comparisons were drawn between EU – in particular Netherlands and Spain – on the one side and China on the other.

Speakers: 

After a few steps of reforms, Copyright protection and the fight to piracy are still of concern for the creative industry in China.

Following extensive consultations with domestic and international stakeholders, in June 2014 the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council released a third draft of the new law. The draft amendments to the Copyright Law will then be presented to the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People’s Congress for further review and final enactment.

The Memorandum of Understanding on reinforcing the EU-China IP Dialogue Mechanism 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.