• Ring the Bell: A 65 minutes Remix Movie created totally in the WOW Game

This movie was made by a few Chinese WOW players. The story is well edited and all the episodes are captured from te WOW game. In this remix movie, the story of the dispute between two Chinese governmental departments on the licensing of the WOW and the the players’ rebellion of the electrotherapeutics to the “net-addiction” are narrated perfectly. The controversial electrotherapeutics was invented by a Chinese psychiatrist and supported by some parents. This is a representative work of Remix by grass-roots Chinese netizens. And it is released with CC-By-NC-SA. Watch it at here (I do wish someone may add English subtitles to it).

• Statistics and Analysis to National Examination for Patent Agent (1998-2009)

This post is contributed by Mr. Xuhui Chen, a new co-author of BLawgDog and a patent lawyer in China. The essay provides the passing rates of each year’s examination and other detailed analysis.

• China IP Weekly Newsletter (17 Jan 2010)

In this issue edited by Luckie Hong, the following news are included: (1) two guys are prosecuted for oporating unauthorized online-game sever of “Audition Dance Battle Online”; (2) A Beijing court ruled that funshion.com infringed copyright by providing downloading; (3) The Measures of payment of the textbooks’ royalties and the Measure of Protection of the Folklores are drafting; (4) Sany group, a major construction machinery producer wins a litigation on its trademark against the figure of “Benz”; (5) Tianjin high technology industry park promulgated a regulation encouraging the endevor of establishing well-known brands; (6) The series cases on the trademark “世界风SHIJIEFENG” was settled by the parties; (7) XGK, a company in Henan province, wins a lawsuit against State Intellectual Property Bureau for its decision of invalitation of the ZL8910393.8 patent; (8) powerdekor, a mojor producer of wood flooring in China, was involved in a patent law suit on its laminate flooring product; (9) Shanghai encourages the application of foreign patent with the maximum of 90,000 RMB financial aid.

• The Story of a Chain Resturant

This post is originally written in English. Click here.

• Google’s Angry, Sacrifice and the Accelerated Splitting Internet

This post is translated and extended in English, please click here for the English version.

• A notice by CNNIC about stop resolving the not “recorded” domain names

This is a copy of the CNNIC’s notice requesting ISPs stopping to resolve the domain name which are not recorded in Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s website registration/licensing system.

• News on the Proposals for strengthening copyright protection in digital environment in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong government proposed a new version of the Proposals for Strengthening Copyright Protection in the Digital Environment. Xie Lin and Donnie co-authored this short post, which briefly introduced the content of the new proposals.

• China IP Weekly Newsletter (10 Jan 2010)

In this issue edited by Luckie Hong, the following news are included: (1) Google apologized openly for the first time in the copyright dispute between Google and Chinese authors; (2) A US software firm sues China for 2.2 billion dollars for using its copyrighted software in the Green Dam; (3) 50% increase of the copyright registration in China, 2009; (4) Hanwang, a Chinese company finally agree to sell the “iPhone” trademark to Apple; (5) Hengyuanxiang, a major Chinese woolen provider, was trapped in a trademark dispute on the “figure of a Sheep”; (6) the tademark of “Pierre Cardin” was finally selled to a Chinese company for 37 million euro; (7) A Fujian firm won IP lawsuit against FKK, a Japanese chemical giant; (8) A patent dispute about Mercury-free batteries falls into a vicious cycle; (9) RichtekTechnology, a Taiwan firm, sued AMD and other 5 US companies for patent infringement

• A brief note to the attorney-client privilege and the witness privilege

• Copyright Committee of the Internet Society of China was established on 30 Dec

• A US software firm sues China for 2.2 billion dollars for using its copyrighted software in the Green Dam

• China IP Weekly Newsletter (2 Dec. 2009)

In this issue edited by Luckie Hong, the following news are included: (1) Zhejiang Higher Court promulgated a guide for hearing the online copyright disputes; (2) A case on the popular book “Mawen’s War” was ruled in Nanjing; (3) The appealing case on the copyright of electronic navigation map in China (the first one in China) was ruled by Guangdong Higher Court; (4) the exposure draft of the new trademark law was submitted to the Legal Affairs Office of the State Council; (5) Google sent a lawyer’s letter to an individula who is raising an objection to the trademark of Google’s Chinese name Guge (谷歌); (6) Beijing No.1 Intermediate people’s Court affirmed the validity of Judger Group’s (a Zhejiang-based garment enterprise) trademark of GEORGE and its figures; (7) The “Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Patent Infringement Dispute Cases” was promulgated by the Supreme People’s Court; (8) the new IMPLEMENTING REGULATIONS OF THE PATENT LAW OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA was passed by the State Council on 30 Dec. 2009; (9) Unilin loses its acts against patent infringing products of Yekalon in Germany.

• Celebrate the Public Domain Day

This post firstly briefed Donnie’s definition of “Public Domain” in the context of Chinese copyright law in his PhD dissertation at China University of Political Science, then introduced the idea of “public domain day” on each January 1st for at this day, many works will fall into the public domain every year. Lastly, the post discussed some famous/interesting Chinese works that will be fall into the public domain since Jan. 1st, 2009.

• BLawgDog’s 2009 Summing-up

In 2009, 170 entries are published at BLawgDog (including 38 English ones). Among them, Donnie contributed about 120 posts, other co-authors contributed about 40 ones. Then this article highlighted a few interesting posts during the year.

• A quick survey: Chinese twitters, are you out of the GFW or in the GFW?

I annouced a very quick survey to Chinese twitter users: whether they are living abroad or inside of the GFW. 88.46% responed they stay in China. For the question “if you live inside of the GFW, are you use twitter frequently”, 70.21% said yes they are. For the question “if you live outside of the GFW, after going back to China, will you use twitter frequently”, 52.94% said yes, but 23.53% said he/she will use twitter only when she/he is out of GFW. For the question “Ask 5 of your QQ buddies randomly, how many of them are using twitter.” 53.85% of the respondent said none of their 5 QQ buddies is using twitter, and only 1.92% said all of the 5 QQ buddies are using twitter too.

• China IP Weekly Newsletter (27 Dec. 2009)

Writen and edited by Luckie Hong, a co-author of BlawgDog, reporting the latest news in IP Law. This issue includes: (1) the promulgation of China’s new Tort Law, in which the ISP’s liability was eventually coded in a questionable way; (2) China association of literature copyright said Google has illegally scanned over 80,000 Chinese books; (3) Taiyuan intermediate peoples court in Shanxi Province issued a warrant of seizure to a karaoke bar for copyright infringement, which is the first time on mainland China; (4) the National Trademark Review and Adjudication Board petitioned to the Supreme Court for the Beijing Court’s rulling of its decision on the “Daohuaxiang” trademark; (5) the dispute of the trademark of *ST Sanlian (SH.600898) will be ruled soon; (6) JNJ (Johnson & Johnson) lost the case on the “Caile” trademark in China; (7) A Newyork listed Shenzhen company was sued for a patent infringement, the damages claimed by the plaintiff was 175 million RMB; (8) Aigo and Netac settled the patent dispute on USB flash drivers; (9) Up to 7 Dec. 2009, the annual number of patent granting is 3007,636.

• The definition of “use” in China’s Copyright Law

This essay reviews the usage of the term “use” in China’s current Copyright Law, and find its definition is hightly confusional, which leads the uncertainty “individul use” in the list of limitations to the copyright in Art. 22 of the Copyright Law.

• Warrant of Seizure for copyright infringement?

This post questioned the legitimacy of issuing a warrant of seizure to Karaoke bars for the reason of copyright infringement, which was happened in Taiyuan, the capital city of Shanxi Province.

ON 15 AND 16 APRIL 2009, CityU of HK Law School held an international conference on the mediation. Experts from China, Hong Kong, Australia and Macau presented their latest academic outputs in the meeting.

The interesting thing is: Most Chinese experts are focusing on the judicial mediation, which is the mediation coordinated, and in many circumstances initiated, by judges during the litigations. Experts in other jurisdictions, by contrary, tends to discuss the mediation out of the court.

China’s judiciary system is actually now experiencing a new wave of transformation. Contrary to the trend before 2007, the current path of the “judicial reform” is to make the judiciary more “close to people”. One of the core measures is to enhance the “judicial mediation”. In my view, if the “profesionalization is a world trend for the mediation” (stated by Professor Nadja Alexander, a prominent expert in the arena of mediation), then the emphasizing of the “judicial mediation” in Chinese courts can be named a trend of de-professionalization for the judcial practice.

In a lunch seminar a week later from the conference, Mr. WU Zhi, an Asso. professor from Hunan Normal University brought his interesating talk about the “the mediation in Chinese IP litigations” in CityU. His presentation proved again my assumption. In resent three years, Chinese judiciary system has issued a good many of documents on the policies of the mediation. Now the Supreme People’s Courts seems stressed the mediation as the preference in the dispute resolution.

The most interesting thing in prof. Wu’s seminar is the discussion among auditors. Most of auditors are the students who registered in CityU’s creative LLM program for mainland judges. Because they are judges on the mainland China, they have many experiences in those judcial mediation. This makes the discussion being exciting. As a real auditor, I do obtain many useful knowledges and inpirations.

VS ?

One of the most impressive inspiration is: why the Chinese courts eager to be mediation centers? Two judges answered this question respectively (one was in the seminar and the other was on his way back to the dorm together with me, and their answers are amazingly identical!): because the China’s courts are aiming at providing dispute solutions rather than the justice. This reminds me a precedent post in this blog on the “mission of the Supreme People’s Courts” (in Chinese). Yes, the Chinese courts are not set as a seperation of sovereignty powers but the institution for dispute resolution authorized by the people’s congress (at least in the Constitution literarily). The Constitution and Laws are just one of the “three supremacies” (the slogan of the supreme court – and a question in 2008 China Bar exam).

As a layman either in the mediation or in the procedure law. I cannot figure out whether this “deprofessionalization” is good or bad in an acedemic way. The only thing raised in my mind is: the conflict among dispute resolution mechanisms. Mediation is a more efficient way in resolving the disputes than litigation, while the feature of the litigation is it’s formal procedure which may be costly but guarantted the rule of law. When the judicary simplified its procedure and compete to the unformal (or less-formal) mechanism of dispute resolution, it actually retreated itself from the position of “transporting justice”. And its status will be conflict to the existing mediation institutions. How many cost will be paid in this institutional competition?

Another interesting topic in is: whether the IP litigation can really be deprofessionlized in the judicial mediation – even if we narrow the aim of the courts only at efficient dispute resolution? Let’s leave this question in the next thread.