Revamp to streamline IPR battles [China]

Special tribunals will be set up to handle intellectual property rights (IPR) disputes and an appeal court in a bid to improve efficiency, the Supreme People's Court (SPC) announced yesterday. The move will see complex cases relating to civil, administrative and criminal matters dealt with by a "unified" tribunal, rather than spread across different ones, according to the newly issued Guideline on Implementing the Compendium of National Intellectual Property Strategy. "If an IPR case involved two or three disputes it had to be heard in different tribunals, which was repetitious, wasted procedural costs and compromised judicial efficiency," said Kong Xiangjun, deputy chief judge of IPR tribunals for the SPC.

Pilot schemes for special tribunals have been running since the mid-1990s, including one high court, nine intermediate courts and 14 district courts, he said, with the Pudong District People's Court in Shanghai the first in 1995. A typical case there involved Shanghai Razor Blade Co Ltd, part of the Gillette Company, which had several disputes over infringements on its trademark with local businesses and government departments. The court was able to employ one tribunal to hear all the grievances, saving time and money. "A unified tribunal improves efficiency and makes full use of the expertise of our IPR tribunal staff," said Chen Huizhen, chief of the Pudong court's IPR tribunals.

The guideline released by the SPC also states it will look to "set up an IPR appeal court" to deal with invalid patent and trademark affirmation disputes, while Jiang Zhipei, vice-president of the IPR association of the China Law Society, said the SPC may establish such a court in Beijing. "Some disputes, especially the affirmation of patents and trademarks, feature highly specialized and sometimes international elements that are often too challenging for local courts to handle," Jiang told China Daily. An appellate court will unify standards in judicial practice, particularly patent infringements and the granting of trademark rights, he said, adding: "It will also help save costs for small and medium-sized enterprises in maintaining IP rights and create a sound environment for innovation."

The global financial crisis has made infringements more complex, with some enterprises being forced to cut budgets for IP protection. Chinese courts concluded 27,876 IPR-related cases, up 32.6 percent year-on-year, according to a work report by Chief Justice Wang Shengjun this month.

Source: China Daily

IIM Ahmedabad launches effort to build clean energy businesses [India]

Renewable Energy Search is an endeavour by IIM Ahmedabad's Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) and Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (Government of India) to identify, encourage and incubate entrepreneurial ideas aimed at solving the energy crisis in the country through creation of viable business models around existing clean energy related technologies.

The effort aims at commercializing scalable existing technologies developed by innovators (researchers, individual inventors, start-ups and large corporations) across the world through creation of a viable business around it; areas of interest include energy generation, efficiency and storage.

The program shall provide support, recognition, licensing, seed-funding and mentoring to the following groups and invites applications in all the three categories.

Start-ups: The program shall provide funding and mentoring support to technology-based early stage start-ups (even pre-revenue) with viable business model and complimentary team. CIIE shall make an investment of up to Rs 20 lacs per start-up over the next few months and either directly fund or help raise further round of investment in the companies.

Entrepreneurs-in-residence (EIRs): The program shall also identify entrepreneurs interested in setting up their venture in this growing sector, but not having yet narrowed down on their business idea. Such EIRs shall get to spend 3-4 months with the program as an EIR to identify a proven technology around which they would like to build their venture. Having done that, the EIR shall create a business plan and build a complimentary team around the idea. EIRs with most viable plans shall be provided funding and incubation support under the program.

Innovators: Innovators (researchers at institutes, corporations, individual inventors etc) interested in commercializing their research work through creation of an enterprise or licensing shall be considered for the "Top Innovator Awards" comprising a cash prize of Rs 5 Lacs apart from incubation and funding or upside from licensing of the technology.

Partners: The program shall be a collaborative effort between industry, academia, government and innovators to create sustainable solutions for India’s energy problem and several like-minded organizations across the globe have shown interests in partnering us for this unique initiative. We are currently in the process of evaluating and finalizing tie-ups with these organizations to jointly build these clean energy start-ups. Some of the partners shall include leading technical institutes in the country for technology evaluation, industry bodies like CII for helping raise future investments, venture capitalists for strategic support and government agencies for further grants whenever required.