11.24.16
Giants of Asia: India More Restrictive on Patent Scope, China More Lenient
With a combined population greater than a third of the world’s population
Summary: India and China are moving in somewhat opposite directions when it comes to patents, as one realises their impact on people whereas the other chooses to repeat the mistake made by the United States (patent maximalism for corporate gains)
TECHRIGHTS spent over a decade writing about the USPTO and about as long writing about the EPO, especially when President Brimelow made mistakes “as such”. Patent scope is a crucial decision which impacts many sectors in a country; it’s simply misguided to believe or to think that more patents would translate into more innovation and commonwealth. It doesn’t work that way.
The latest IAM Weekly newspaper says in the “Editor’s round-up” that “we wondered whether one of India’s leading IT companies has all but abandoned software patents, looked at a patent-driven rapprochement between InterDigital and Huawei, and explained why Asian investors are sinking their money into IP management businesses.”
“Patent scope is a crucial decision which impacts many sectors in a country; it’s simply misguided to believe or to think that more patents would translate into more innovation and commonwealth.”We covered all of these (in recent days) and IAM has just published this “international report” about India, where software patents continue to be disallowed (excellent policy, which is routinely under fire from foreign multinationals, not domestic giants).
India got its balance right on patents (also when it comes to medicine, not just software), so why is China going the other way? This is already harming some of its own industry and attracts a great deal of trolls (making nothing and trying to extort everyone for money).
According to this new article from IAM, “IP analytics start-up PatSnap has closed its Series C funding with investments from Sequoia Capital’s China arm and Beijing’s Shunwei Capital Partners. The deal further underlines Asia-Pacific investors’ growing interest in IP management and strategy services.”
“Lack of quality control at SIPO leads to a false sense of growth, as is the case at the EPO under Battistelli where old files are pulled out and rubber-stamped for fake growth or illusion of growing demand, clout, etc.”This shows yet more of that obsession with patents, even in domains that require none of them. Companies that produce nothing want to make money and they are essentially a kind of trolling industry — like that which threatens to expand in Europe if the UPC ever becomes a reality.
Based on IP Kat‘s Tian Lu, there was some UPC propaganda in the EU-China IP Forum earlier this month [1, 2]. To quote a portion from the second part: “This panel on specialist IP courts also saw some optimism from Pierre Veron (member of the Drafting Committee of the Rules of Procedure of the Unified Patent Court and now a member of the group of experts advising the Preparatory Committee of the UPC), who expressed the view that even without UK participation post-Brexit, the other participating Member States of the EU would press ahead with the UPC project in the long term and would seek to ensure that the UPC will be a success.”
We are going to deal with UPC in a separate post, but let’s just say that it’s troubling to see these overlaps between China and Europe and it’s not because of fear of China (Chinophobia) but because of SIPO.
“China is fast becoming a hotbed of litigation and it already ‘exports’ such litigation to other countries (many reports on that these days).”Lack of quality control at SIPO leads to a false sense of growth, as is the case at the EPO under Battistelli where old files are pulled out and rubber-stamped for fake growth or illusion of growing demand, clout, etc. The SIPO examiners, as many professionals out there will agree/can attest to, just grant a lot of patents composed in Mandarin right and left. There are two new reports, one from MIP and another from IP Watch, which amplify SIPO’s propaganda, citing a WIPO report. Some Chinese patents that are counted at the EPO are not even translated into a European language, let alone examined/validated for their quality, yet here we have another repetition of the misleading claim that China ‘leads’ by having a crappy patent office that accepts crap applications. If one was to judge the USPTO similarly (over 10 million patents and counting), the EPO would look rather bad.
If only China adopted a saner approach to patenting (like in India), the world’s high-tech industries would be better off. China is fast becoming a hotbed of litigation and it already ‘exports’ such litigation to other countries (many reports on that these days). This problem is likely to become more apparent in the coming years. █
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