March 6, 2012

Are Chinese Intellectual Property Courts Fair? ^Reply

Lan Rongjie, “Are Intellectual Property Litigants Treated Fairer in China’s Courts? An Emprical Study of Two Sample Courts,” Indiana University Research Center for Chinese Politics and Business, Working Paper #16, January 2021.

The world is abuzz about how Chinese courts have found against Apple’s claims of the iPad trademark in the PRC, and what it will mean for both Apple and IPR in China in the future. Against what we see happening this week, it is useful to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

In an empirical study of two courts in China, Lan Rongjie finds that for several reasons, you are more likely to get a fair trial in an IPR case in Chinese courts than in any other type of civil action.

Apparently, judges are more likely to defer to experts in such cases, and they are likely to be much more careful in rendering a verdict, especially when foreign parties are the plaintiffs.

The paper will be of scant comfort to Apple’s attorneys this week, but it does remind us that companies as varied as Louis Vuitton, Starbucks, and Lego have all won intellectual property cases against local Chinese businesses.

iPad legal fight highlights Chinese pitfalls (bbc.co.uk)
China faces conflict of law, business in iPad row (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Eastern delight: two new titles on IP in Asia (ipkitten.blogspot.com)
Chinese Video Streaming Site Gets Tiny Penalty After Pirating Ultraman (penn-olson.com)
Op-Ed Contributor: To Understand China, Look Behind Its Laws (nytimes.com)
A Test Case for Intellectual Property in China (spectrum.ieee.org)

October 20, 2011

So You Think your Kindle Royalties Are Small? ^Reply

Law, Media

Xiaokang2020» Blog Archive » Who makes money off digital publishing?, Joel Martinsen takes a short but discouraging look at the state of e-books and author royalties in China today. He makes it clear that while authors face a host of challenges making a living from their writing in China, unscrupulous publishers are probably close to the top of the list.

January 4, 2011

Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism ¹

IPR

This pdf book from the RAND Corporation makes the case that the effects of pirated DVDs reach far beyond the emptier pockets of major film corporations. This is an argument that Foreign Policy publisher Moises Naim makes at great length in his book Illicit, but this RAND work does a far more thorough and systematic job of documenting the link than Naim does. Further, RAND lays out some concrete steps to deal with the problem (impractical though they may be.

October 20, 2010

Policing 2020 ^Reply

Law

A pdf book that takes a look at how many aspects of law enforcement will change over the next ten years.

October 19, 2010

Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence ^Reply

Law

Image via Wikipedia

A pdf book that dives into the issues U.S. law enforcement agencies face. Naturally there is a great emphasis on organizational behavior, efficiency, constitutional practices, and racial matters. What caught my eye was the discussion about corruption: not that it was there, but that it seemed to merit only a passing mention.

Reading through the report, one gets the impression that U.S. law enforcement is rather troubled. What would do a real service would be to benchmark U.S. police practices both between US cities and between US cities and the police forces overseas (and not just Japan, Australia and Europe.)

October 19, 2010