The 12th China International Patent Technology and Products Fair held in Liaoning Dalian
The 12th China International Patent Technology and Products Fair which is hosted by the National Intellectual Property Administration, PRC and the People’s Government of Liaoning Province opened on November 11th in Dalian, Liaoning. Nearly 3,000 enterprises and institutions participated in the exhibition through the online and offline integrated platform of the Fair.
The Fair lasts for three days, with the theme of “Intellectual Property Leading the High-quality Economic Development”. The Fair mainly hosts with the form of online exhibitions, with a series of online and offline activities, and organizes high-level professional audience teams such as industry procurement groups, local procurement groups, and financial investment groups to promote intellectual property rights and markets, capital, talents, services, etc. Elements are connected to accelerate the transfer of intellectual property rights. In his speech at the opening ceremony, Shen Changyu, Director of CNIPA, pointed out that high quality economic development cannot be separated from the strong support of intellectual property rights. In recent years, China’s intellectual property career has achieved great development, great leaping and a great improvement. Currently, the number of patent applications in China ranks first in the world each year, and through the implementation of patent quality improvement projects, a number of high-value core patents have been cultivated.
The biggest highlights of this Fair are the four "firsts", namely, the first time that the China Patent Award Presentation Conference was held at the same time, the first to build an online and offline integrated platform for the fair, the first China Intellectual Property Dalian Summit Forum, and the first to build the fair’s offline exhibition area, which will help accelerate patent transformation.
Revision of the Copyright Law has been passed, effective next June
The 23rd meeting of the 13th NPC Standing Committee end on November 11th in Beijing. The meeting passed a vote on the revision of the Copyright Law and the Veterans Protection Law. According to previous reports, Article 31 of the second review draft of the Copyright Law amendment stipulates the liability for infringement of copyright or copyright-related rights, which stipulates that the actual loss of the right holder, the illegal income of the infringer, and the difficulty of the royalties calculated, the people’s court shall, based on the circumstances of the infringement, award a statutory compensation of less than RMB 5 million.
In order to prevent the use of advertising fees in the name of free performances to achieve profit-making purposes in disguise, the third review draft revised the above-mentioned fair use situation to: “For free performances that have been published, the performance has not been charged to the public or The performers are paid and not for profit.”
To this end, the third draft of the draft amendment has added a provision: “Radio stations and television stations shall exercise the rights provided in the preceding paragraph and shall not affect, restrict or infringe others’ exercise of copyright or copyright-related rights.”
The 2020 Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Intellectual Property Exchange Expo commenced today
The 2020 Intellectual Property Exchange Expo innovated the form and shifted online, focus on intellectual property transaction operations, created a platform that integrated intellectual property results display, transaction operations, online seminars, innovative cooperation and other elements, bringing together the entire chain of supply and demand resources of intellectual property. It aims to implement the national strategy of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, promote the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area intellectual property operation service system, and create an international Intellectual Property Exchange Expo that never ends.
Who owns the "Double-11" trademark? JD.com and Alibaba vs. CNIPA
On November 1, 2011, Alibaba Group applied for the registration of the "Double-11" word mark on the 35th category of advertising and other services, and was approved for registration on December 28, 2012.
In 2018, JD.com believed that Alibaba Group did not actually use the "Double-11" trademark in the three years from November 2015 to November 2018, so it filed an application to cancel the trademark to CNIPA. In May of this year, CNIPA concluded that the Alibaba Group had used the "Double-11" trademark in "advertisement; display of goods on communication media for retail purposes; sales promotion for others" services. The registration of trademarks on some services should be maintained; however, the trademark registrations of the remaining services are canceled because they are not used in many services such as “business management assistance”.
Both JD.com and Alibaba Group were dissatisfied with the review decision. JD.com refused to maintain the registration part and Alibaba Group dissatisfied with the de-registration part. The two companies filed suits with the Beijing Intellectual Property Court respectively, requesting the court to order CNIPA to make a new decision.
On the afternoon of the 10th, two cases were heard in court. JD.com and Alibaba Group participated in the litigation as the plaintiffs in the two cases. The defendants in both cases were CNIPA.
Total amount of patent and trademark pledge financing expected to exceed 200 billion yuan in 2020
Shen Changyu, director of the National Intellectual Property Administration, PRC, revealed at the 12th China International Patent Technology and Products Fair on November 11 that the total amount of patent and trademark pledge financing across the country this year is expected to exceed 200 billion yuan. He also stated that the strategic outline for a country with intellectual property rights towards 2035 and the Intellectual Property “14th Five-Year Plan” are being formulated, which will further improve the intellectual property transformation and application incentive policies and the intellectual property market operation system and mechanisms, and vigorously develop patent-intensive industries.
“In the first half of this year, the central government issued the opinions on accelerating the improvement of the socialist market economy system in the new era, clearly proposing to improve and refine the rules and regulations of the creation, use, transaction, and protection of intellectual property rights. Focusing on the use of intellectual property rights, we coordinated and promoted the establishment of mechanisms, building a platform, and promoting various tasks in the industry, the ability to use intellectual property has been continuously enhanced, and benefits have accelerated.” Shen Changyu said.
China (Guangdong) Intellectual Property Protection Center pre-examination period has shortened to 4.4 days
In accordance with this year's complex epidemic situation, in order to help enterprises rescue their difficulties, the development zone has introduced a series of measures to help enterprises resume work and production, and implement the tasks of "six stability and six guarantees". Up to now, Guangzhou Development Zone has issued three intellectual property securitization products, accounting for 30% of the national total. Among them, this year, two major industries of biomedicine and new-generation information technology were issued two intellectual property securitization products, which raised 434 million yuan for 24 companies. Guangdong Center also launched the “Intellectual Property Fast Financing Loan” financial service to support enterprises with intellectual property assets to obtain pure credit loans as low as 3.15%. 145 enterprises have already issued loans with a loan amount of 995 million yuan. These business benefit measures have helped enterprises in the region overcome the problem of capital shortage caused by the epidemic and injected new vitality into the innovative development of enterprises.
Japan Patent Office releases statistics on trademark applications in 2019
On November 6, 2020, the Japan Patent Office held the sixth trademark system subcommittee and released statistics on the number of trademark applications in 2019 at the meeting.
The main content involves:
(1) In 2019, both domestic and international trademark applications in Japan showed an increasing trend. Domestic trademark applications increased by 3% over the previous year, and international trademark applications increased by 9%;
(2) The number of trademark applications in the service industry has increased significantly;
(3) The number of trademark applications by Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and individuals has increased significantly, accounting for about 70% of the number of domestic applications in Japan;
(4) The number of non-Japanese domestic applications has increased significantly. Among them, the number of applications from China has increased significantly, with an increase of about five times in the past five years.
