Recently, the draft of "Decision on Several Issues Concerning Litigation Procedures of Patent and Other Cases" was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for deliberation.

The draft stipulates that, for first-instance judgments or rulings of civil or administrative cases involving high level of technicality, appeal shall be filed with Supreme People's Court within the statutory period.

The draft further stipulates that, for cases mentioned above, provided the first-instance judgments, rulings or mediation decisions have entered into effect, the requests for trial supervision procedures thereto, including retrial or protest, shall be tried by the Supreme People's Court, while the Supreme People's Court may order the People’s Courts at lower levels to retrial by law. (Source: China Intellectual Property News)

According to State Administration for Market Supervision (SAMS), during the period from January to September this year, 5.507 million trademark applications were filed, an increase of 39.8%; the trademark registration turnaround time was shortened to less than 7 months; 4,395 Madrid international trademark registration applications were filed from China; the number of valid registered trademarks was 17.981 million by the end of September.

During the same period, 1.191 million invention patent applications were filed, up 7.3% and 328,000 patents granted. The average examination period for invention patent remained consistently at 22 months. The number of PCT international patent applications accepted was 38,000, an increase of 8.4%. By the end of September, the number of invention patents in China reached 1.607 million, an increase of 20.1%. (Source: www.stcn.com )

Recently, China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) issued the “2017 Report on the Major Statistical Data of AI field in China”. As reported, in 2017, the number of published invention patent applications and the number of granted invention patents in AI field reached 46,284 and 17,477 respectively. AI related invention patents grew steadily in China in 2017, and companies were found to be more advantageous in vertical application of the technology. 　　

The data also shows that in 2017, among the 46,284 published AI invention patent applications, 41,707 were from domestic and 4,577 from foreign applicants; and among the 17,477 granted AI invention patents, 16,595 were from the domestic and 882 from foreign applicants. Guangdong province, with 4,777 granted AI invention patents, ranked first among the domestic regions. And US ranked first among the foreign countries with 317 granted AI invention patents. (Source: www.cnipa.gov.cn )

On October 30th, the 24th China-South Korea Intellectual Property Office was held in Seoul, South Korea. The directors of China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) and South Korean Patent Office met at the meeting.

The two sides reviewed the achievements of cooperation in patent examination, automation, industrial design, reexamination and other fields over the past year, agreed to implement the pilot project of China-Korea joint search service, and conducted in-dept discussions on how to strengthen cooperation in the fields of trademark, IP protection, personnel training, as well as optimizing cooperation mechanisms.

After the meeting, the directors of the two offices jointly signed the "Summary of the 24th meeting of the directors of the two offices of China and South Korea." (Source: China National Intellectual Property Office)

The private prosecutor，a cultural media company in Beijing, develops and operates a website of dance teaching and video sharing, and claims that they had signed contracts with certain dancers to obtain the exclusive information network communication right of certain dance videos. The defendant, an IT company in Suzhou, was claimed to be found broadcasting on their website over 1,500 of the private prosecutor’s works, and sued by the private prosecutor at Beijing Haidian District Court.

Entrusted by the defendant, Unitalen lawyers made a strong defense from the following perspectives:

1.There are many flaws in the content and the form of the authorization documents provided by the private prosecutor, and the chain of ownerships of the copyrighted works/video products provided is incomplete. Therefore, the evidence cannot prove the legitimate source of the private prosecutor’s claim of “exclusive information network communication right”.

2.As the private prosecutor failed to submit notarized proof of video comparison, the comparison was conducted only by the names of the videos and, as a result, less than 300 videos were found, which does not reach the threshold of “distributing a total of other party’s works for 500 pieces or more”. Besides, the defendant provides video sharing service and network storage space to the users, and only bears the responsibility of “deletion after notification” with regards of allegedly infringing content.

3.The private prosecutor cannot prove that the defendant has “profit-making purpose”, one of the prerequisites for constituting the crime of copyright infringement.

After hearing opinions of both sides, the court decided that the private prosecutor lacked evidence for its accusation, and made a judgement to dismiss the charge of the private prosecutor. 　

On October the 16th, “Far East Business and IP Protection Forum” was held in Milan, Italy. Unitalen partners Zhao Lei and Pan Wei were invited to give a keynote speech on “Business Strategy and IP Protection Strategy in China”.

The forum focused on the Far East market and invited lawyers from China, Japan and Korea to introduce business strategies and IP protection strategies in these countries. Around 100 representatives from famous EU enterprises attended the event.

Unitalen partner Zhang Yazhou was recently interviewed by Beijing Time Live Broadcast for his views on the trademark disputes between Beijing Daoxiangcun and Suzhou Daoxiangcun which lasted for over 10 years. On October 12th, the People's Court of Suzhou Industrial Park made the first instance judgement in favor of Suzhou Daoxiangcun, ordering Beijing Daoxiangcun stop using the “稻香村”(Daoxiangcun) logo on pastry products and compensate Suzhou Daoxiangcun for 1.15 million yuan, whereas one month earlier Beijing IP Court issued a first instance judgment in favor of Beijing Daoxiangcun ordering Suzhou Daoxiangcun stop using the “稻香村”(Daoxiangcun) mark on “Zongzi (rice dumpling), mooncake and pastry products and compensate Beijing Daoxiangcun for 0.3 million yuan.

On October 13, 2018, the 7th China IP Judicial Protection Symposium was held in Shenzhen. Unitalen partner, Li Yongbo, was invited to give a keynote speech.

The seminar focused on the hot topics such as GUI and sports events related IP protection, and held the discussions from four perspective including industrial design patent, copyright, trademark, and unfair competition. Experts from academic, judiciary and business sectors attended the seminar.

During the event, Mr. Li Yongbo shared his views on the topic of “factors in determining infringement in Internet unfair competition”, which has attracted great attention.