Institute for Internet Policy & Law @ Beijing Normal University

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.

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

26th International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property (ATRIP) Congress took place in Buenos Aires from July 16th to July 18th, 2007. The Congress attracted more than 300 hundreds IP and researchers from all five continents. The high-quality presentations impressed all the participants. The congress website is at http://www.atripbuenosaires.com.ar/ing/programa.asp.>>

An Yale ISP fellow, Hong Xue, presented on “Copyright Maze in Distance Education” and was re-elected as the Member of ATRIP’s Executive Committee (Exco). Among nine Exco Members, she is the only from Asia.

Since July 2000, I have been attending almost all the ICANN meetings. I can make a long list of those meetings in different fancy locations. This time was in San Juan, Puerto Rico (June 23-29). Seven years later, I found I almost know more than 70% of the participants. Local participation is still limited and ICANN is still full of veterans.

I’ve been working with the ALAC since 2003. Since February 2007, I only working as an IDN Liaison of the Committee. In San Juan, I organized an IDN Workshop on June 28, presented at ALAC-Board Meeting on June 27 and public forum on June 28. An IDN WG is going to take off after San Juan and around 10 people have signed on.