Archive for December, 2006

China ratifies the WCT and WPPT

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

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Phizer consolides its legal control over Viagra

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

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Telecom cable cut-off reminds the OSPs their physical reality

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

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Chinese Heart or Dragon Heart?

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

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Is technological-neutrality a option for making technical standards?

Technological-neutral or not? This is a question.

When the MII is going to issue the 3G licenses, some Chinese experts warn the government that so-call technological-neutrality principle will only consolidate the existing technical advantage and patent monopoly of the international giants. China needs to give the favorite treatment to her domestically based TD-SCDMA standard.
http://tech.sina.com.cn/t/2006-12-26/03121305968.shtml

Another Chinese standard that is going to be implemented is the uniformity of mobile phone chargers of different brands. From June 14, 2007, the standard is put into implementation.
http://tech.sina.com.cn/t/2007-01-18/00121340744.shtml; http://tech.sina.com.cn/focus/sjcdqhybz/index.shtml

Different voice can be heard as well. Discrimination against foreign companies is not consistent with the WTO commitment.
http://tech.sina.com.cn/t/2007-01-12/15171333215.shtml

Ironically, the recent developments of the digital TV standard demonstrate that there is no neutrality but commercial interests in the western standard choice and deployment. The new patent addition to the standard will force Chinese TV exporters to pay US$20 more to the patent owners.
http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/2006-12-26/00321305773.shtml

To make things worse, EU is forming another patent pool for digital TV.
See http://tech.sina.com.cn/e/2007-01-13/08051333820.shtml

MII has announced the Chinese national standards (AVS video and audio) developed by domestic enterprises.
http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/2007-01-21/07061345493.shtml

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