Institute for Internet Policy & Law @ Beijing Normal University

The most important decision made at this meeting is the change of the Chair of the Board. Dr. Cerf retired and Mr. Peter Thrust from New Zealand was elected as the new Chair.

While ICANN celebrated for itself vehemently, it achieved very little on policy development. No decision was made on the new gTLDs implementation and IDN ccTLD PDP or fast-track solution. The conference was still full of boring and empty reports and failed to provide the effective translation services (not even Chinese that occupy a quarter of the whole CA population). Anyone from audience who would like to speak will have to wait in the long queue in front of the mike.

I submitted to the Board the IDN status report on behalf of the ALAC. I wonder if GAC or GNSO did the same thing. There is no punishment for not responding to the Board’s request. Neither is any rewarding for so doing.

Are these ICANN meetings strengthening “the single, global, interoperable Internet”? You bid.

Vancouver’s weather in October is normally warm and pleasant before Halloween, but this year is not. At least in the week of October 14, it was cloudy, rainy and most unfortunately cold. The 2nd Annual Conference of EDGE-NET, predated with a series of workshops, was held on October 15. The purpose of the EDGE Network is to help Canada, as a middle power between the developed and developing countries, develop effective strategies to play a leading role in the new economic order of the 21st century.

I attended the WIPO Development Agenda Workshop and discussed with other participants about a series of 15 chapters for publication. This is my second EDGE meeting. The first one was at the end of November 2006 in Ottawa.

For information on EDGE-NET, please see http://web5.uottawa.ca/weblaw/edge/index.php

A conference on “IPRs and Transfer of Knowledge–From Research Institutions to the Market” was successfully held in the University of Trieste, Italy, September 14-15 . Professor M. Bussani brought 13 speakers from US, Europe and Asia to the conference.

I made the presentation on “China’s Scientific Policies and Technology Transfer”, as the first speaker of the conference.

A Chinese court ordered Sohu.com to compensate the writer of romantic mobile phone messages for selling these love notes without paying him. Although the write was far from satisfied with the damages worthy of RMB 100,000 yuan (US$13,000) as against RMB 3 million yuan in his claim, he said he would not appeal to the verdict issued by the Second Shanghai Intermediate Court.

http://news.findlaw.com/ap/o/51/09-14-2007/a7240009808ea008.html

After 13 years’ discussion and drafting, Antitrust Law is finally approved by the NPC. The Law targets at three antitrust acts: monopoly agreement, abusive market domination and anti-competition concentration of operators.

The Law obviously compromises on many key issues:

1. There is only one provision against abuse of intellectual property rights, which will not have substantive effect on present disputes.

2. Administrative monopoly is barely tackled.

3. The enforcement system is also strongly attacked. No centralized enforcement is established. The Antitrust Commission of the State Council is only a coordinating body.

http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-08-31/050713783631.shtml