China IP SME Helpdesk Newsletter

To improve IP protection and management on the island of Hainan, the island’s authorities are building the Sanya Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City Intellectual Property Special Zone. The special zone will have “the first and only branch centre in the country established by the China Copyright Protection Center”. The centre was designed to provide the services such as copyright verification and protection, value assessment, copyright trading, and the international exchange of copyrights mainly for software, cultural and literary productions and digital works.

According to the CNIPA “Li Danlu, Deputy Commissioner of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) headed a delegation to Poland and Finland upon invitation for a working visit” in the past months. During the visit to Finland and Poland, the delegation discussed bilateral cooperation as well as issues of common concern and shared working experience on IP strategy-making.

Short introductory paragraph: The China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) announced that starting from 1 December 2023, all trademark opposition applications in China must be filed electronically. This would likely have no impact on EU SMEs as the opposition applications are filed by trademark attorneys, who will let their clients know the format of documents in an advance.

According to the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), in 2023, the “market regulatory authorities across China have investigated and dealt with 1,209 internet unfair competition cases”. China’s market regulation authorities are focusing more heavily on the internet unfair competition cases also in the future, as the SAMAR recently launched a law enforcement campaign to combat unfair competition.