Infringement

In January this year Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Qishan called for more efforts to fight copyright infringement and counterfeit products. Following a campaign against online piracy the authorities investigated more than 2,800 cases and withdrew certificates from at least 36 websites and companies. And earlier this month a man was sentenced to six months' imprisonment and fined 2,000 yuan ($320) for illegally publishing copies of the works of Mo Yan, winner of last year's Nobel Prize in literature.

NOAPIP released further details of 36 important copyright cases that it had fought in 2012. The most serious punishment handed out was an 11 year prison sentence while the highest fine was for 3.2 million yuan. The office said that in 2012, 5,331 copyright infringement cases had been solved and more than 40 million pirate items confiscated or destroyed.

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We are pleased to inform you that the ninth issue of the European IPR Helpdesk Bulletin has been released and is now available on-line.

A central thread of this European IPR Helpdesk Bulletin is related to the efficient management of intellectual property (IP) as a tool for commercial gains. From a brief description of an interesting tool put at the disposal of organisations by the Danish patent and trade marks office (DKPTO), to test the efficiency of their strategy, to two others article on IP commercialisation highlights and using customs for intellectual property enforcement, you will be given suggestions and recommendations on how make the most of your intangible assets.

An article specifically on trade marks will tell you that a good brand incontestably brings an added value to the organisations, but the success of the trade mark requires a solid and well prepared strategy. In addition to that, a case study will put forward the way a University Technology Transfer Division can facilitate the process of connecting industry with research institutes (and vice versa) and to actively support the cooperation as a whole.

The usual quiz, information about the new Ambassador scheme and other events of interests will close our quarterly publication, which we hope will be thought-provoking!

According to officials of the State Intellectual Property Office, last year, IP authorities have taken several steps to promote intellectual property protection, for example, special campaigns were waged to combat intellectual property violations and counterfeiting; enforcement plans were issued to guide local IP offices to enhance enforcement inspections in large exhibitions; law enforcement performance was properly evaluated; crucial mechanisms on intellectual property protection were established; programs on improving patent administrative enforcement capacities were about to be drafted; network of enforcement information was duly established.

In 2012, the enforcement capacity of local IP offices has been significantly increased, which played a crucial role in boosting confidence of patent owners, increasing the quantity of patent applications, and bolstering innovation.

In 2012,  IP authorities in China have handled a total of 9,022 IP cases, growing by 199%, in which 2,510 cases were on patent (2,232 patent infringements, up 77.5%, and 278 other disputes, soaring by 929.6%), increasing by 70%.

For further details, please click here.

If you want to learn more about any aspect of intellectual property rights in China and have free, practical, business advice relating to China IPR to European SMEs, you can visit the China IPR SME Helpdesk online portal at www.china-iprhelpdesk.eu.

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At its last competitiveness meeting, the Council of the European Union adopted a resolution approving the launch of an EU customs action plan to combat intellectual property right (IPR) infringements for the period 2013-2017.

The EU customs action plan to combat IPR infringements for the next five years stresses four strategic objectives:

• to effectively implement and monitor the new EU legislation on customs enforcement of IPRs;
• to tackle major trends in the trade of IPR-infringing goods; 
• to tackle the trade of IPR-infringing goods throughout the international supply chain; and 
• to strengthen cooperation with the European Observatory and with law enforcement authorities on infringements of IPRs.

On the same line of thought, the Council released a Proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning customs enforcement of intellectual property rights, as agreed by its Permanent Representatives Committee.

To read the entire resolution, please click here; to read the regulation proposal, here.

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Ofcom, the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, has carried out a tracking study into the extent of online copyright infringement in the UK, stemmed from a recommendation in the 2011 Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth. The issued report resulted from a partnership with the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO), seeks to provide as comprehensive a dataset as possible to improve and build the necessary evidence base for online copyright infringement policy.

Some interesting key findings on UK individual aged 12+ are:

• Overall volumes of illegal content consumed online varied by category. Volumes were highest for computer software (47% of all computer software products consumed online were estimated to be illegally obtained), followed by films (35%) and music (26%), whereas it was lowest for books (12%);
• When asking infringers why they download or stream/access content illegally, the most common reasons cited for doing so were because it is free (54%), convenient (48%) and quick (44%). Close to a quarter (26%) of infringers also said they do it because it means they can try before they buy;
• Factors that infringers said would encourage them to stop infringing included the availability of cheaper legal services (39%), if everything they wanted was available legally (32%) and if it was clearer what is legal and what isn’t (26%). 

For further information and to read the full report, please click here.

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Last week, the European Commission presented the Report “Measuring IPR infringements in the internal market”, which was prepared by RAND Europe.

This study was commissioned by the Commission with the purpose to assist in the “development of a methodology that would quantify the scope, scale and impact of IPR infringements on the European economy.” Even though, there are estimates of the negative impact of infringements in several sectors, according to the study “most of these efforts lack a transparent methodology, suffer from serious methodological or data limitations or are funded by stakeholders in the debate. This means that the resulting estimates must be heavily caveated and qualified, putting into question the extent to which they are useful to governments and firms trying to understand and tackle the phenomenon. Without objective and reliable estimates of the extent of IPR violations it is difficult to debate these claims.”

To read the full report, please click here.

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Last week the Parliament discussed and voted a resolution on the European Comission’s proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning customs enforcement of intellectual property rights. The Parliament puts forward several amendments to the proposal with the purpose to “make customs procedures more effective by laying down clear rules on the storage of infringing goods, who should bear the burden of proving that they infringe IPRs, and who should pay the costs of destroying them.”

According to the European Parliament, this resolution will be the basis for the negotiations with the Council for a possible second reading agreement.

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The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), was rejected yesterday, Wednesday 4, by the European Parliament (EP), and hence cannot become law in the EU. This was the first time that Parliament exercised its Lisbon Treaty power to reject an international trade agreement. 478 MEPs voted against ACTA, 39 in favour, and 165 abstained.

Notwithstanding his satisfaction for having followed his recommendation, the ACTA rapporteur for the EP stressed the need to find alternative ways to protect intellectual property in the EU, as the "raw material of the EU economy".

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The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was rejected on Monday by the Development Committee, the fourth committee of the European Parliament, after the Development, Civil Liberties and Industry committees, advising the International Trade Committee to do so.

These committees' positions are however not binding on the Trade Committee, which will adopt its own position as lead committee on the next 21 June.

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