China E-ventions
Patent News from the Middle Kingdom
Vol. 3 , No. 10 - November 10, 2003
TOPICS THIS ISSUE:
- China's Nanotech Patent Applications Rank 3rd in World
- Patent 'War' Looming Large in China
- CISCO Halts Patent Suit vs. Chinese Rival Huawei
- APEC Members Close to Launch of Patent Talks
- China to Build 100 University Science Parks
LEHMAN, LEE & XU Recognized As Top Ten Patent Firm in China The international IP magazine "Managing Intellectual Property" (MIP) revealed the result of its World IP Survey, and published in its October issue (2003) the list of top-ranked patent firms in each country and region with established IP markets.
Lehman, Lee & Xu was listed in the survey as one of China's top ten patent firms.
MIP conducts its World IP Survey annually. In June 2003, it started the eighth annual MIP World IP Survey, covering nearly 50 countries and regions in all parts of the world. About 4,000 worldwide IP specialists were invited to participate in the vote for leading patent and trademark firms in each jurisdiction. | |
China's Nanotech Patent Applications Rank 3rd in World
China has risen to third place in nanotech-related patent applications. According to the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, the nation had fewer than 1,000 nano patent applications before 2001. During the past two years, the number has grown to 2,400, or twelve percent of the world's total.
The Ministry report also stated that while Chinese researchers have been working with nanomaterials since the 1990s, they still lag behind developed countries in studying nanoelectronics and nanobiotechnology.
(Source: Smalltimes)
Patent 'War' Looming Large in China
Multinationals are expected to begin waging a patent 'war' in China against local companies later this year or next year, intellectual property rights (IPR) experts have warned.
Chinese firms that adopt mainstream technology and have a big share of the market but few patents of their own will be targeted.
At a just-concluded intellectual property seminar in northeast China's port city of Dalian, Yuan Jianzhong, head of an IPR task force with a Taiwan-based institute of information industry, said that Chinese firms have few patents in some manufacturing areas, which will be the focal point of overseas-funded firms.
Multinationals, such as Matsushita, IBM and Nokia, have been stepping up their patent rights arrangements on the Chinese mainland since 1999 in such areas as wireless telecommunications, photoelectricity, information technology and bio-engineering, he said.
The patent war is on the verge of breaking out as some of the multinationals have basically completed their arrangements, said Yuan.
Wei Jun, chief counsel of the US Hogan & Hartson L.L.P. Beijing Office, said "a growing number of enterprises on the Chinese mainland have been the target of IPR investigations launched by the United States in recent years."
A Chinese machinery company was sued by a US firm for patent infringement in Chicago earlier this year when the Chinese firm participated in an exhibition there, Wei said.
Chinese manufacturers of DVD players have paid a total of three billion RMB (nearly 363 million US dollars) in patent licensing fees, or 4.5 US dollars for each DVD player they manufacture, to Hitachi, Matsushita, Toshiba and some other Western firms, who own key patent rights over DVD technology.
Such payments for the use of licensed technology to overseas firms totaled 10 billion RMB (nearly 1.21 billion US dollars), experts said.
To make matters worse, many Chinese firms are resigned to the challenges of their overseas counterparts in intellectual property lawsuits. They adopt the attitude of "burying their heads in the sand" by doing nothing except seeking compromises through payments of large sums of licensing fees when facing intellectual property infringement charges from overseas companies, said the experts.
That was exactly the attitude adopted by some Japanese firms in the 1980s, which led to payments worth billions of US dollars in licensing fees to US firms over intellectual property infringement charges.
About 71 percent of China's export companies came across technological trade barriers, resulting in 17 billion US dollars in economic losses.
In an exclusive interview with Xinhua, Zhang Qin, vice director of the State Intellectual Property Office, said the situation of China's independently owned intellectual rights allows no room for optimism.
Official statistics show the number of China's patents for inventions peaked at 6,177 in 2000, or only 5.5 percent of that of Japan and 7.2 percent that of the United States in the same year.
In 2002, China applied for 2,415 patents in foreign countries, among which only 192 were awarded, fewer than the number awarded to NEC, a Japanese company, by the United States.
Zhang said China should increase the awareness of intellectual property in the whole society, and improve law enforcement in protecting the legal interests and rights of IP owners, while encouraging independent innovation and applying for patents of their own at home and abroad.
China should also train more professionals specializing in IPR in colleges and universities offer other forms of training on IPR, such as on-the-job training and long-distance training, said the vice-director.
New laws are needed on intellectual property obtained by professionals as employees, and on abuse of IPR by overseas firms attempting to seek monopoly, said Zhang.
(Source: Xinhuanet)
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CISCO Halts Patent Suit vs. Chinese Rival Huawei
Signaling movement toward a settlement, networking equipment giant Cisco Systems Inc. agreed yesterday to temporarily halt its lawsuit accusing China's Huawei Technologies Co. of copying Cisco's proprietary technology.
As part of the agreement to stay the litigation for six months, Huawei will abide by a preliminary injunction barring it from distributing routers and other switching products that copy Cisco's equipment.
"As part of the agreement, Huawei has stopped selling the products at issue in Cisco's lawsuit on a worldwide basis and will only offer for sale new modified products," said Penny Bruce, a Cisco spokeswoman.
An independent expert accepted by both companies will review Huawei's changes to make sure they do not copy Cisco's technology.
Specifically, changes have been made to the command-line interface, user manual, help screens, and a portion of source code in routers and switches.
Other terms of the agreement, including whether Huawei will pay Cisco any damages, are not public, said Jodi Warner, a spokeswoman for Huawei.
Huawei, founded by a former Chinese army officer, is trying to jump into the corporate router and switching market that Cisco dominates. This year, Huawei and Marlborough-based 3Com Corp. began a joint venture to develop and manufacture enterprise-class networking equipment.
Cisco filed the patent and copyright-infringement lawsuit in January, claiming the Chinese company illegally copied software, documentation, and other aspects from Cisco products. At least five patents were infringed, Cisco said.
(Source: Associated Press)
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APEC Members Close to Launch of Patent Talks
Member states of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum are close to agreement on launching talks over a common system of patent licensing, government sources recently announced.
If a common system is realized, a patent granted by any one of the patent offices of the 21 member states and regions of APEC will be valid in all of them, the sources said.
For example, currently patent rights obtained in Japan are valid only in Japan.
Patent applicants in Japan who wish to obtain patent protection overseas currently have to file separate applications with authorities in the countries and regions concerned.
Patent applications in Japan, including those filed by foreign applicants, number an estimated 420,000 a year, resulting in a two-year wait for approval of each application, officials of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry's Patent Office said.
APEC groups 21 economies, including Japan, the United States, China, South Korea, Russia, Southeast Asian countries, Canada and some Latin American nations.
A common system would dramatically reduce the number of patent applications filed in each country, in turn leading to faster acquisition of patent rights, the sources said.
Companies in APEC member states will benefit considerably from a common patent system in terms of time and money saved, the sources added.
(Source: Daily Yomiuri)
China to Build 100 University Science Parks
China will build 100 national-level university science parks with advanced functions and management by the end of 2005, the Ministry of Education recently announced.
Xie Huanzhong, a ranking official with the ministry, said China would set up an information sharing network among university science parks and find ways to help the science parks to cooperate with international counterparts.
Some Chinese universities began to construct science parks in the late 1980s, and in 1999, China decided to launch national-level science parks. In recent years, university science parks in China have become an important driving force for high technology innovation.
The university-based science parks, by joining with local governments and companies, were playing a positive role in speeding up the industrialization of academic research results, and pushing forward reform of the school teaching and management systems, said Xie.
Statistics show there are 44 national-level and 124 local university science parks in China, which by the end of October last year, had attracted a total investment of 29.7 billion RMB (3.59 billion US dollars), and covered a total of 2.27 million square meters. To date, China's university science parks have industrialized 1,860 scientific research results, and have been granted 1,923 patents.
(Source: Xinhuanet)
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China E-ventions is intended to be used for news purposes only. It should not be taken as comprehensive legal advice, and Lehman, Lee & Xu will not be held responsible for any such reliance on its contents.
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