Institute for Internet Policy & Law @ Beijing Normal University

Chongqing High Court finally dismissed an artist’s claim that another artist copied his creation manner in a paint titled “Chongqing Bombarded”. Idea/expression dichotomy is held in the ruling.

http://www.cnradio.com.cn/news/200701/t20070102_504366795.html

The National People’s Congress has ratified the WIPO Copyright Treaty on December 29, 2006. After the ratification is submitted to the WIPO, China will soon be the 53rd Member State of the Treaty. On the same date, the NPC ratified the WIPO Performers and Phonograms Treaty. The WCT and WPPT are jointly called the two Internet Treaties.

The NPC Standing Committee also makes statements that these two WIPO treaties will not apply to Hong Kong SAR government and Macao SAR government before the central government makes further decisions.

http://www.ipr.gov.cn/ipr/en/info/Article.jsp?a_no=43227&col_no=934&dir=200612

After its patent over Viagra was confirmed by the Court, Phizer won the patent infringement case against two Chinese companies that produced the generic-versions of Viagra.
http://news.findlaw.com/ap/o/51/12-28-2006/a937000b6c3a7d71.html

However, Phizer lost the case in a long-last trademark dispute. Wei Er Man, which is producing a competitive product to Viagra, won over the trademark registration for “Wei Ge” (meaning “a strong man”), which has long been used as the nickname of Viagra in Chinese market.
http://case.ipr.gov.cn/ipr/case/info/Article.jsp?a_no=48393&col_no=65&dir=200701

Foreign intellectual property owners’ another triumph is marked by the Chinese court’s ruling in favor of Premier League in trademark dispute.
http://news.findlaw.com/ap/o/51/12-28-2006/9d630006efde524f.html

If an service provider naively believes that it can avoid the regulation of the physical world by merely operating in visual reality, the undersea fiber-optic cable cut-off by a strong earthquake near Southern Taiwan Ocean proves their miscalculation. The cut-off nearly paralyzes or significantly slows down the Internet and telecom communications between Mainland, TW, HK, MO, South East Asia and USA. Interestingly, a Chinese officially media vehemently reported that those service providers (Yahoo! MSN) that deliberately place all their servers outside China to shield from Chinese regulation are hit most seriously in this accident, while the foreign services that have at least one local server (Google) may maintain normal operation. This accident also prove that visual localization may be a good commercial tactic, because the websites under the China’s country-code domain (CN) are not affected, though many sites under gTLDs suffer.

http://www.forbes.com/markets/economy/2006/12/27/internet-china-cables-markets-emerge-cx_vk_1227markets02.html

http://news.sohu.com/20061228/n247305391.shtml

In Chinese, a computer chip are often analogized as the “heart” of the computer. The analogy partially comes from the old ad. of Intel for Pentium–“Give your computer a Robust Heart (the Chinese transliteration for “Pentium” roughly means robust)”.

In January 2006, a technological scandal was reveal by a mysterious figure named “Deep Throat” that a star professor Chen Jin in Shanghai Jiaotong University fabricated a “Han Chip” (Chinese Heart) project and obtains billions of fund from the government. Those chips that were claimed to be independently developed by Chen were actually Motorola chips with trademark wiped off. http://info.china.alibaba.com/news/detail/v5000441-d5688591.html ; http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/31/business/chinet.php

In a sharp contrast, the chips that are really developed by Chinese enterprises–“Loongson” (Dragon Heart) are going to be exported to France and Italy. http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/2006-12-26/02031305932.shtml