On April 1, 2021, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court announced a ruling in favor of Bulgari over a third party’s trademark registration of Bulgari’s Serpenti snake head design. The Court found that Liu’s registered Chinese trademark 15911982 for a snake head design infringed Bulgari’s copyright in the design, reversing the China National Intellectual Property Administration‘s (CNIPA) earlier ruling. This decision shows one useful approach to challenging trademark squatters and hijackers in China is to use copyright law when a design …
Category: Copyright
The Intellectual Property Tribunal of China’s Supreme People’s Court Released Top 10 Cases of Technical Intellectual Property Rights in 2020
On February 26, 2021, the Intellectual Property Tribunal of the Supreme People’s Court released a list of top 10 cases of technical intellectual property rights for 2020 that the tribunal ruled on. The list covers anti-suit injunctions, trade secret theft, punitive damages, software copyright infringement, utility model infringement, invention patent invalidation, dueling administrative and civil enforcement appeals of patents, integrated circuit layout design infringement, affirmative injunctions and antitrust.
China’s Supreme People’s Court Issues Law Interpretation for Intellectual Property Infringement
China’s Supreme People’s Court released and effective on March 3, 2021 the Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on the Application of Punitive Damages to the Trial of Civil Cases of Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights (最高人民法院关于审理侵害知识产权民事案件适用惩罚性赔偿的解释) (法释〔2021〕4号). The Interpretation defines when a plaintiff may request punitive damages in civil intellectual property infringement cases; how People’s Courts should determine if punitive damages should be awarded; and how People’s Courts should calculate the amount of punitive damages. Note that no defenses …
China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate Issues 26th Batch of Guiding Cases for Intellectual Property
On February 8, 2021, China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate issued the 26th batch of guiding cases covering intellectual property. This batch covers 5 cases including criminal trademark, copyright and trade secret law. Foreign victims included Starbucks, Cisco, and HP in 2 of the 5 cases. A brief summary of the cases follow. The full text is available here (in Chinese only).