Legal News

On December 30, 2020, the “Regulations of Shanghai Municipality on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights”(hereinafter referred to as the “Regulations”) has been reviewed and approved at the 28th Meeting of the Standing Committee of the 15th Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress, and will be implemented on March 1 2021. The “Regulations” has the following highlights: To list a more comprehensive object scope of IPR The common IPR objects include copyright, trademark, and patent, which have relevant laws. However, there are several other IPR object in other laws, and administrative regulations. For example, trade secrets in the “Anti-Unfair Competition Law”, integrated…

A business name is the main factor on distinguishing the market operators. With the development of economy, the market operators are increased, so the rule on the administration of business name is important. However, business names are managed by administrative divisions independently; some market operators would register same or similar business names in different cities, with which those market operators could achieve the illegitimate purpose of “Free-ride”. In order to regulate business names, and administrate unfair competition behaviors, on December 14, 2020, the 118th executive meeting of the State Council passed the revised “Administrative Regulations on Enterprise Name Registration” (hereinafter…

On November 11, 2020, the 23rd meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress voted and passed the decision on amending the “Copyright Law”. The revised “Copyright Law” will come into effect on June 1, 2021. For the majority of enterprises, the following modifications deserve special attention: The scope of the object of works has been modified. The “film works and works created using methods similar to film making” is revised as the “audio-visual works”. Such modification delete “filming” as a requirement or reference requirement on the identification of relevant works, which means the new types of works,…

In consideration of the national security and interests, many countries have set regulations on import and export. In 1994, China promulgated the “Foreign Trade Law”, in which the principles for import and export of goods and technologies have been stipulated. Since 1997, China has successively released several regulations on the export of military products, import and export of dual-use items and technologies. With the development of economic, the methods of import and export become more diversified, such as investment, re-export, re-import and so on; the export objects become more complicated, which beyond the scope of goods and technologies, so the…

On September 10, 2020, the Supreme People’s Court promulgated the “Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Civil Cases Involving Trade Secret Infringement” (hereinafter referred to as the “Provisions”), which replaced the articles related to trade secret infringement as stipulated in the “Supreme People’s Court, Several Issues Concerning the Applicable Laws in the Trial of Unfair Competition Civil Cases Interpretation” (hereinafter referred to as “2017 Judicial Interpretation”) . Compared with the   “2017 Judicial Interpretation”, the “Provisions” is more comprehensive, and it has further illustrated the articles as stipulated in…

Article 26 of the “Foreign Investment Law” stipulates that the State shall establish a complaint mechanism for foreign-invested enterprises. Article 29 of the “Implementation Regulations for the Foreign Investment Law” stipulates that the commerce administrative authority of the State Council, departments or agencies designated by local People’s Governments of county level and above shall improve upon the complaints handling work rules, improve upon the complaints handling methods, and specify the complaints handling timeframe. Recently, the MOC has released the “Measures on Handling Complaints from Foreign-invested Enterprises” (hereinafter referred to as the “Measures”). There are four key aspects. To expand the…

In January 1999, SIPO published the “Provisions for Investigation and Handling of Acts of Passing Off Patent by Administrative Authority For Patent Affairs”, which was abolished on April 27, 2002. In the past 18 years, there have been almost no specific guidelines on the administrative enforcement on investigating patent counterfeiting. Recently, SIPO issued the “Guidelines for Investigating Patent Counterfeiting and Handling Patent Marking Nonconformity Cases “(hereinafter referred to as the “New Guidelines”). Since the relevant provisions on the handling patent marking nonconformity cases are basically consistent with the “Guidelines for Handling Patent Marking Nonconformity Cases (Trial)” issued by SIPO in…

The “Trademark Law” provides principles for the protection of trademark exclusive rights. The enforcement agencies do not have a consistency on handling similar cases. Therefore, the CNIPA released the “Judging Criteria for Trademark Infringement” (“Judging Criteria”) on June 15, 2020.  The Judging Criteria provide specific judgment standards and requirements for enforcement agencies, and the main contents are as follows: 1.The judging criteria on the “identical goods” and “similar goods” The “identical goods” refers to the name of goods actually produced and sold by the suspected tortfeasor is the same as the name of commodity of others approved to use the…

Since the implementation of the “Measures on Security Examination for Online Products and Services (Trial Implementation)” in 2017, various practical problems jumped out. For example, it is stipulated that online products and services providers shall be responsible for the cybersecurity examination, however, most of those providers are not the operators of the online platform, it is not reasonable and practical for them to conduct the examination. Under this circumstance, on April 13, 2020, the Cyberspace Administration Office and other 11 departments jointly released the “Cybersecurity Review Measures” (the “Measures”), and its main contents include: The operator shall be responsible for…

In 2016, the State Council released the “Opinions of the State Council on Establishing A Fair Competition Examination System in the Building of the Market System” (Guo Fa [2016] No.34) (hereinafter referred to as the “Opinions”). The “Opinions” has been implemented for several years, and there are a few problems in practice. Therefore, on May 9, 2020, the SAMR, NDRC, MOF and MOFCOM have jointly issued the “Notice on Further Promoting Fair Competition Review” (Guo Shi Jian Fan Long Duan [2020] No.73) (hereinafter referred to as the “Notice”). The main contents include: 1. To add the object of review The…