IPKat team blogger Jeremy - who chairs the event - is speaking on two topics: Picking Winners and Losers (this topic seeks to integrate legal input into a topic often wrongly monopolised by marketeers) and Developing a Brand (which examines different legal devices for protecting a brand once it is pushed out from its original role and leveraged in different ways). Other speakers are Anat Paz (Lovells), Aaron Wood (trade mark attorney and international man of mystery), Mark Bezant (LECG), Tom Hays (Lewis Silkin) and Declan Cushley (Browne Jacobson). For those who might have been thinking of sneaking off before the end, there are two fully interactive Workshop Sessions. See you there?
The IPKat's blogging colleague IVIR student Danny Friedmann (IP Dragon) has penned a neat article, "How to work within China’s IPR enforcement system for trademark and design rights", which you can read in full here. Danny, who is working on a thesis entitled ‘Paper Tiger or Roaring Dragon, China’s TRIPs Implementations and Enforcement’, advocates pursuing civil rather than criminal remedies where available, as well as looking at opportunities for forum-shopping in order to avoid 'localism'.
How to make a paper tiger here
I always thought that what protected patents from abuse in India / China was the lack of demand in the local market. (I use demand in the technical economic sense, ie desperate need for aids drugs in Africa but no cash so no demand; no desparate need for a dessert from the dessert trolley but the diner has the cash hence demand).
ReplyDeleteIn support of the lack of local demand argument: consider the khosher-rabbi-Acesulfame K patent breach from a couple of years ago and note that the breach came to light only when the product was being imported into the UK.