By Kathrin Hille in Beijing and Patti Waldmeir in Shanghai

Apple has been granted patents on some of the distinctive elements of its store designs in China as the US company moves to better protect itself against rampant copying of not only its products but also its sales channels on the Chinese mainland.
The three recently granted design patents cover the architecture of Apple’s stores in Shanghai and were awarded in May, according to state media reports, suggesting the company registered them after it began its expansion in China last year. One was announced on Wednesday by the state intellectual property office, covering a glass dome such as the one that is a distinctive feature of one of the company’s Shanghai stores.

More

ON THIS STORY

• China in thrall to the cult of Apple
• beyondbrics Apple store? Yup, we can fake it
• Theme park opens new front in copyright wars
• What Steve Jobs can learn from fake Apple stores

Apple has a patchy record in securing patents and trademarks in this fast-growing but challenging market. The gaps in the company’s intellectual property rights protection were highlighted by the revelation in July of a fake Apple store in Kunming, the capital of the south-western Chinese province of Yunnan.
The technology company is preparing to open another Apple store in Shanghai on Friday, joining two others in the city and one in Beijing, and is also poised to open its first store in Hong Kong before the end of the month. On Wednesday, Apple started selling the 3G version of the iPad 2 in China.

In the past, Apple has sometimes been slow to register patents or trademarks in China early enough. When it began selling the iPhone there, it had to conduct lengthy negotiations to buy back its trademark from Hanwang, a Chinese technology company that had already registered it in the country.

“The majority of Apple’s key patents are not registered in China,” said Li Hongjiang, a lawyer at Unitalen, a law firm in Beijing. He said this was the case particularly for patents frequently cited as components of other patents.

“Therefore, these patents can be used without compensation in China. This has left room for Apple’s competitors to develop in China, and something resembling the patent wars between Apple and Samsung might well occur in China in the future.”
Apple is not alone in having relatively weak IP protection in China.

Horace Lam, an IP expert at law firm Jones Day in Beijing, said: “People criticise the China IP environment, and I am not saying China has the perfect system … but [with] a lot of really big listed US companies – their IP protection is a joke.”

China has written new patent and copyright laws in the past several years and a new trademark law is in the pipeline. They are broadly in line with those in other countries. “Most of China’s IP laws comply with China’s WTO and Trips obligations,” said Elliot Papageorgiou of Rouse & Co, the IP consultancy in Shanghai, referring to the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

The cost of protecting IP in China is a fraction of that in the west, Mr Papageorgiou said. “You can file a patent in China for no more than $3,000-$4,000. Anybody who doesn’t spend $4,000 extending their foreign patents to China needs their head examined,” he said, noting that pursuing an infringer would cost much more than that.

Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
Web link: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/eb1b831c-e42e-11e0-b4e9-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss#axzz1ZJA5MwSR

Updated: 2011-09-27 13:18
By Zhao Tingting (chinadaily.com.cn)

The launch of Chinese, Japanese and Korean ".asia" Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) will help enterprises with brand establishment and enhancement and make the Internet moreaccessible, said Edmond Chung, CEO of DotAsia, in an exclusive interview with China Daily Website.

For international brands, the ".asia" IDN will expand the exposure of their Asia region branches and strengthen intellectual property rights protection, and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) around the world will benefit from the IDN deployment, Chung said.

"Local SMEs in Asia can leverage their existing brand in their native language to build their online presence with an IDN, while global SMEs can become more Asian-friendly by adoptingan Asian IDN as their web address."

A ".asia" domain improves the search engine optimization (SEO) ranking for users looking for Asian information as well as the hundreds of millions of users searching from Asia.

"Businesses are known in their native languages and the development of English domain names has reached its utmost point. Promoting domain names in native languages will make Internet easier to access for people in less developed regions," said Ching Chiao, vicepresident of DotAsia.

The number of Internet users in China has continued to increase. Currently only about one third of the Chinese population can access the Internet, so there is a large space for growth, said Chiao.

"The most important growing point is in the second and third-tier cities and the countryside.Chinese ".asia" IDN will help the popularization of Internet access in rural areas and promote the Internet development in China."

In order to avoid irrational speculation and disorder, DotAsia, the registration agency that oversees the ".asia" top-level Internet domain name, specially designed "Sunrise" and "Landrush" phases in ".asia" domain name registrations.

The Sunrise phase accommodates registrants with "prior rights" to names to register IND ".asia" domains with priority. Theses include governments, trademark holders and registered businesses.

For Landrush, which comes in the wake of Sunrise, if only one application is received for an IDN, the IDN will be allocated to the applicant. If more than one successful application is received for the same IDN, an auction will be held between the applicants at the base price of $10.

"The auction method is used to ensure the stability of the opening of the registration," Chung said. "Before us, the opening of each top level domains brought chaos and invited a lot of lawsuits and disputes. The result shows that our method is successful. Only people who really want the domain name will get it and use it."

In the Sunrise phase of Chinese, Japanese and Korean ".asia" IDN applications, DotAsia received 50 percent of applications from China, 25 percent from Korea and 25 percent from Japan.

".asia" is the first new top-level domain with Asia as the base area compared with old top-level domains such as ".com" or ".cn".
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved the relaxation of the rules for the introduction of new top-level domains and will receive applications next year. The decision will allow companies to register their brands as generic top-level domain names.

"If all new top-level domains are all owned by US and European companies, it will undoubtedly impact the development of Internet development in the Asian region. So we are pushing Asian organizations and companies to consider applying for new top level domains. No matter inbrands or in industries," Chung said.

As a regional not-for-profit organization promoting Internet development and adoption around Asia, DotAsia has been committed to community work in Asia since the organization became profitable in 2008.

DotAsia launched the One Laptop Per Child project to bridge the digital divide. The organization also supports the Information Society Innovation Fund (ISIF) which is aimed at stimulating creative solutions for information communication technology development needs in the Asia Pacific region. DotAsia also organized the NetMission Ambassadors program bringing together network of young volunteers devoted towards promoting and contributing towardsdigital inclusion, and Internet governance.

Web link: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2011-09/27/content_13801308.htm