Book Review: China Court Cases on Intellectual Property Rights

Like it or not - the rapidly developing field of intellectual property law in China including its national procedural particularities will inevitably move into the focus of everybody working in international IP prosecution and litigation. However, the non-chinese language references are still rare, such that the new book edited by Professor Zhou Lin is highly welcome to anybody doing business in china.

According to the publisher’s blurb:

This book presents, in extraordinary detail, sixteen landmark cases that profoundly affect the protection of intellectual property rights in China. Written by six prominent Chinese legal scholars and jurists – including judges who themselves participated in these decisions – each case is fully described and analysed: the parties and their representatives, the basic facts, the facts ascertained by the court, the evidence presented by plaintiffs and defendants, the judges’ opinions with their arguments and reasoning, the unanimous conclusions, and the judgment, along with a wealth of deeply informed comment.

The book includes cases covering the entire field from unfair competition over trade secrets, copyright, trademarks to patents, wherein only one of the cases is a purely patent law case. The cases are explained in detail in a language that is not always easy to read. However, it gives a good impression on the course of litigation procedures in China and on the decisive legal questions in the 16 cases in a way that is understandable for readers acquainted with the basic concepts of Intellectual Property Law.

A little bit disappointing for a book edited in September 2011 is the fact that the decisions date from 1996 – 2001. It is called an "Update and Commentary Version" of an earlier version published in 2002 in the context of the EU-China IPR Cooperation Programme. However, the updates are difficult to identify.  Given the rapid development of its subject-matter, e.g. copyright law in the internet, some more recent cases would surely be interesting. Further, the task of sorting out the special features of the Chinese case-law as compared to what is commonplace in the rest in the world is left to the reader.

Bibliographic Data:

Edited by: Zhou Lin
September 2011,  ISBN 9041134190
XV+316 pages, Hardcover
USD price: $174.00

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