From October 19 to 22, the 2024 International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI) World Congress is set to take place in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province. This is the first time for China to host the World Intellectual Property Conference since AIPPI was established 127 years ago.

The 2024 AIPPI World Congress will be hosted by China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and AIPPI, and organized by Hangzhou Municipal People's Government and AIPPI China, under the theme of "Balancing Protection and Innovative Development of Intellectual Property". The congress is expected to attract 1,500 Chinese and foreign guests from over 80 countries and regions.

(Source: Xinhua News Agency)

A report released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on July 3 showed that from 2014 to 2023, more than 38,000 generative AI patent applications came out of China, ranking first in the world, six times more than those filed in the United States, which came in the second place.

The report WIPO Patent Landscape Report on Generative AI showed that 54,000 generative AI-related patents were filed worldwide over the 10-year period from 2014 to 2023, with more than 25% of those patents published last year.

In terms of categories, the image/video data category tops the list of the generative AI-related patents, with text and speech/voice/music categories in the second and third places, respectively. The top ten patent applicants are Tencent, Ping An Insurance, Baidu, Chinese Academy of Sciences, IBM, Alibaba Group, Samsung Electronics, Alphabet, ByteDance, and Microsoft, respectively. In addition to China, the main source countries for generative AI-related patent applications further include the United States, Republic of Korea, Japan and India.

(Source: Xinhua News Agency)

Recently, the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) of China launched a new trademark search engine, which enables the search of identical or similar trademarks by uploading images. Henceforth, TIPO will become another IP office that can conduct the trademark search by uploading images, following the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), IP Australia (IPA), Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), and the World Intellectual Property Organization Global Trademark Database (WIPOGBD). Moreover, TIPO is also calling for applicants to provide search results when filing trademark applications, which is expected to shorten the examination time.

(Source: Unitalen)

On the afternoon of May 30, Chinese President XI Jinping and President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding on intellectual property cooperation between the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) and the UAE Ministry of Economy in the Great Hall of the People of Beijing. SHEN Changyu, Commissioner of the CNIPA, and Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, UAE's Minister of State for Foreign Trade, signed the memorandum of understanding on behalf of their respective IP authorities.

Both parties agreed to deepen cooperation in various fields including invention patent, design, trademark, geographical indication, and layout design of integrated circuit.

(Source: website of the CNIPA)

Recently, the second-instance trial of the contract dispute case between CAI Shaofen (the “Plaintiff”) and Zhou Liu Fu Jewelry Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhou Liu Fu") over the overdue use of portrait for advertising was concluded. Neither of the two instances courts supported CAI Shaofen's sky-high claim of 9.3 million yuan for breach of contract. Unitalen represented Zhou Liu Fu and won the case.

Case Brief

(I) Demands of the opposing party

The Plaintiff alleged that Zhou Liu Fu failed to "withdraw or recall the plaintiff's name and portrait", which constituted a serious breach of contract, and demanded that Zhou Liu Fu cease the infringement and pay compensation of 9.3 million yuan in overdue usage fees and other damages.

(II) Facts of the case

1. Both parties agreed that during the period from December 1, 2017 to November 30, 2019, CAI Shaofen would serve as the brand ambassador of Zhou Liu Fu Jewelry, and agreed that within 2 months (before January 31, 2020) after the expiration of the agreed period, Zhou Liu Fu shall withdraw or recall relevant campaigning materials containing the plaintiff's name and portrait.

2. Zhou Liu Fu signed a contract with a new ambassador in June 2019, and officially launched the promotion for the new endorsement in August 2019. However, evidence collected by the Plaintiff shows that although the brand ambassador displayed on the homepage of Zhou Liu Fu's official website after the expiration of the original contract (CAI Shaofen being the ambassador) is not the plaintiff CAI Shaofen, relevant contents containing her name and portrait are still displayed after searching for her name, with the release time falling with the contract use period. As a result, CAI Shaofen alleges that Zhou Liu Fu has committed a serious breach of contract and should compensate her for the overdue usage fees.

(III) Decision of the court

The court of the first instance ruled that Zhou Liu Fu shall withdraw the contents involving CAI Shaofen and pay the opposing party an appropriate amount of 20,000 yuan as attorney fees, while rejecting the rest of the claims, that is, the court did not support any "overdue usage fees" or compensation for breach of contract claimed by CAI Shaofen. CAI Shaofen was not satisfied with the ruling and filed an appeal. The court of the second instance rejected the appeal and upheld the original judgment.

Typical Significance

The court employed a dual standard of "contract interpretation" and "factual judgment" in the determination of liability, and this case further clarified the method to analyze the amount of compensation. The court held that upon the termination of the endorsement relationship, WeChat official account posts, Weibo posts, and other We-media articles published during the endorsement period and still remaining after the termination of the endorsement should be deleted as stipulated in the contract. However, the failure to delete such contents does not constitute a serious breach of contract, and thus CAI Shaofen's claim for compensation for breach of contract was not supported. This judicial approach effectively balanced the interests of both the brand and the ambassador, representing a new development in the dispute case of advertising endorsement.

Facts of the Case

Vallourec Oil & Gas France, the patentee, is a global leader in high-quality seamless steel tube solutions, mainly serving the energy market (oil & gas, power generation) and focusing on research of the most complex application environments. Relying on six major R&D centers and over 500 engineers and technicians worldwide, the company constantly maintains its leading technological advantage to meet the latest demands of its customers.

Vallourec, as a company with significant technologies in the field of seamless steel tubes, is deeply aware of the importance of patent protection. Upon discovering that a major state-owned enterprise had infringed upon its patent on steel tubes for oil fields, Vallourec chose to resort to legal means to defend its rights and interests. Recently, the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court made its first-instance judgment, in which the court determined the infringement facts of the defendant and ordered the defendant to cease the infringement, and to compensate the plaintiff for economic losses and reasonable expenses totaling 800,000 yuan.

Case Analysis

This case involves large-scale specialized equipment for oil fields, and the focus and difficulty of this case lie in how to obtain the evidence of infringement and conduct technical comparison.

Firstly, the particularity of the product sued for infringement poses significant challenges in the evidence collection. Given the complex production process of steel tubes for oil fields and the involvement of commercial secrets, Unitalen's attorney team and the plaintiff's technical expert team ultimately determined the solution of collecting evidence from the user (an oil field company) of the product sued for infringement outside the case after repeated research and discussion.

Secondly, the complexity of the patent technology involved also increases the difficulty of the case. Casing tubes for oil are regarded as the "embroidery needle" of the metallurgical steel pipe industry. The attorney team and the plaintiff's technical expert team in this case proposed to adopt the approach of joint notarization of evidence preservation across multiple regions. By taking evidence from the model for notarization and performing the off-site survey for notarization of the product sued for infringement, the relevant features of the product sued for infringement were obtained for infringement comparison.

The victory of this case demonstrates the importance attached by the Chinese laws on intellectual property rights and provides stronger protection for domestic and foreign innovative subjects.

Recently, World Trademark Review (WTR), a worldwide authoritative media in the field of intellectual property, announced the list of WTR Global Leaders 2024, and attorney Ray Lei Zhao, a Unitalen partner, continued to be selected on the list, which is the second consecutive year for attorney Ray Lei Zhao to be selected on the list.