02.06.17
Gemini version available ♊︎China is Quickly Becoming a Patent Litigation Mess and Web Sites of Lawyers (or Their Fronts) Like It
Dime for the lawyers, but at whose expense?
Summary: China’s newly-found obsession with patents has turned into a disease; Western lawyers love it and exploit it for promotion of patent maximalism in the West
THE OTHER DAY, over at IP Kat, Eleonora Rosati wrote about a “New National IP Strategic Action Plan in China” and said: “China wants to be seen as a responsible member of the international IP community that contributes actively to the formulation of international rules, wishes to accelerate the revision of the Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting Organizations, promote the implementation of the Doha Declaration on Public Health and the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances. The Plan also wants to promote the establishment of a mechanism to help protect and enforce IP rights of Chinese businesses abroad.”
“We remind readers that proponents of software patents in the US increasingly use “China” as their fig leaf.”China seems to have taken these ambitions too far, to the point of granting patents on just about everything, including software (which is not patentable elsewhere).
An article by Joff Wild, Jacob Schindler and Richard Lloyd of IAM, published in their latest magazine issue, continued their eagerness to push patent maximalism through China (trying to eat some of the Chinese “pie” and use China to ‘dare’ other countries to expand patent scope) and in another article they wrote: “For Asian tech corporates, convergence is presenting previously unknown legal risks and opportunities for collaboration. New entrants will have to be canny to survive in this increasingly complex business environment…”
So seek a lawyer? Like those that are funding IAM to help create this mess? We remind readers that proponents of software patents in the US increasingly use "China" as their fig leaf. IAM is just one of the symptoms. In last week’s blog post it wrote:
China-based data provider IP House recently put together a fairly thorough analysis of all the rulings delivered by the Beijing IP Court during 2015. The information on damages from this first batch of patent disputes should prove a useful benchmark for monitoring whether Chinese policymakers’ goal of increasing award amounts is being realised. More recent developments surrounding evidence preservation and punitive damages suggest that higher damages is a priority as litigation numbers in the country continue to zoom.
What it means is, China copies the mistakes made by the US about a decade ago and now it’s just a litigation hub that is destroying the country’s producing element. With this patent gold rush, which is becoming the subject of growing scrutiny, China is now devouring its own economy, in order to bolster trolls, not producers. Did they not learn from the mistakes already made in the US? █
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