"Innovators do enough protection beforehand than they do afterwards." Li Chaofan, vice president of Beijing Chaofan Intellectual Property Agency Co., Ltd., has handled many intellectual property cases. He said that entrepreneurs or innovators must do a good job in trademark protection, copyright protection and patent protection before exposing their products, which can reduce the impact of infringement to some extent.
Nowadays, many products designed by young people will be publicized and sold online, which makes infringement more hidden and makes it more difficult to defend rights. Li Chaofan said: "How to prove the ownership of copyright is very difficult. Combating piracy and infringement is conducive to creating a good environment for innovation and entrepreneurship."
"With the development of Internet technology, piracy can be described as rampant." Wei Yanling, a lawyer of Beijing Jiashan Law Firm, mentioned that the difficulties encountered in rights protection mainly include the following points: the hidden clues of infringement are difficult to find, it is difficult to obtain evidence after discovery, the period of rights protection is long, the amount of compensation is low, and it is difficult to implement.
For example, in the case of infringement under the evidence collection line, it is difficult to determine the actual business place of the infringer because the infringement is hidden.
Usually, because the infringer knows that he is committing an infringement, in order to avoid being discovered, their actual business site is not consistent with the address registered in the industrial and commercial department and the delivery address of the online store, which brings great trouble to the obligee’s rights protection and evidence collection; Moreover, infringers are generally very vigilant. In the process of field investigation, they should pretend to be buyers and partners to visit the production workshop, ask for samples and publicize documents. A little carelessness will lead to the failure of investigation and evidence collection, and even personal danger.
There are also many difficulties in obtaining evidence of infringement online. First, notarization is usually adopted to obtain evidence, and the notarization period is long, which is not conducive to the purpose of stopping infringement quickly, but economic compensation can be requested; Second, some shops are very vigilant. After the notary office buys an order, they will not deliver it once they find something abnormal. As a result, notarization fails and rights cannot be protected.
Li Chaofan reminded young innovative entrepreneurs: First of all, before products are pre-sold and sold online, copyright registration and trademark registration should be carried out in relevant state departments and institutions, and materials that can prove their originality should be obtained first; Secondly, it is necessary to sign relevant confidentiality agreements before inviting manufacturers to produce and contract, and it is required not to disclose products or to produce products privately and sell them to other manufacturers; After discovering the infringement, you should find professional agents and lawyers to deal with related problems and focus on your own business.
He emphatically reminded us to pay special attention to this issue when Weibo, WeChat friends circle and QQ space are exposed.
Li Chaofan found that the younger generation of entrepreneurs’ awareness of rights protection is improving, the attitude of internet platforms to crack down on infringement is very firm, and complaints about infringement are also accepted quickly, and powerful measures have also been introduced at the national level.
Last year, Alibaba launched the "Initial Creative Protection Scheme", aiming at solving the social problem of original protection with technical resources. On Alibaba’s original protection platform, even if it is only a creative manuscript, the original merchants can complete the process of third-party notarization institutions’ deposit and electronic filing within a few hours as long as they launch it on Alibaba’s platform. Once the products released later are copied, the merchants can initiate rights protection complaints through the original protection platform.
As long as the original creator completes the initial registration, the platform data technology will finally determine whether there is plagiarism based on the algorithm of image, text and behavior characteristics. Once plagiarism is determined, the platform will automatically handle the complaint. Li Xihan, director of intellectual property protection of Alibaba, said: "It is equivalent to using second-level storage, instant access and other desirable Internet data technologies to issue ‘ Birth certificate ’ 。”
The New Progress Report on Intellectual Property Protection and Business Environment in China (2018) shows that in terms of intellectual property protection, China has continuously improved the legal system of intellectual property rights, strengthened administrative law enforcement and judicial protection, promoted regional cooperation among departments and deepened international cooperation. In 2018, the national administrative law enforcement departments investigated and dealt with 215,000 cases of infringement and counterfeiting, including 77,000 cases of patent infringement and counterfeiting, 31,000 cases of trademark violation and more than 2,500 cases of infringement and piracy, and the customs seized 47,200 batches and 24.8 million pieces of infringing goods. Judicial protection has become more powerful. Public security organs have cracked nearly 19,000 cases of infringement and counterfeiting, procuratorial organs have arrested 3,306 cases involving 5,627 people, and courts across the country have concluded nearly 320,000 cases of various intellectual property rights, up 41.6% year-on-year.
In addition, on April 23rd this year, the 10th meeting of the 13th the NPC Standing Committee adopted a decision to amend the Trademark Law of People’s Republic of China (PRC), and the revised provisions will come into force on November 1st, 2019. The overall trend of this revision is to strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights, crack down on malicious registration of trademarks for non-real purposes, improve the relief system for malicious registration and malicious litigation, increase the amount of compensation for trademark infringement, especially malicious infringement of trademark rights, and significantly increase the illegal cost, which will give full play to the deterrent effect of trademark law on malicious registration, malicious litigation and malicious infringement.
Among them, the revised Article 63 of the Trademark Law changes the calculation method of compensation for malicious infringement of trademark rights from the original "more than one time and less than three times" to "more than one time and less than five times". The maximum legal compensation is raised from the original "3 million yuan" to "5 million yuan". The revision of this clause reflects the further increase of punitive damages for intellectual property infringement.
China Youth Daily China Youth Network reporter Lareina C