In What Ways Can Startups Obtain Competitive Advantages from Intellectual Property?

(By You Yunting) Large number of business opportunities have arisen from the rapid development of wireless and mobile technologies. As a result, new startups appear one after another, scrambling for these opportunities. However, the faster a market grows, the fiercer competition it involves. The process of Entrepreneurship is a race with other outstanding entrepreneurs, in which they use reasonable efforts to gain competitive advantages and win their rivals. If properly used, intellectual property rights can be very helpful in creating advantages. Here, let’s talk about what advantages can startups create by using intellectual property.

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Why Shanghai Court Enforces Trademark’s Diligence Obligation on Original Equipment Manufacture?

(By You Yunting) Original Equipment Manufacture (the“OEM”) refers to a commercial model where the Principal person is responsible for the brand, research and design, and marketing, meanwhile, the manufacturer is responsible for production. As a big manufacturing country, OEM is an important way for our manufactured products to participate in international competition. Under China’s Laws, however, it is unclear whether OEM constitutes as a trademark infringement, and local courts have handed out different decisions for this problem. According to the author’s information, Fujian higher court, Zhejiang higher court and Shanghai higher court held that OEM manufacturers does not involve trademark infringement, but Guangdong higher court decided that the OEM manufacturers shall take responsibility for trademark infringement in many cases. The Supreme Court has not yet expressed its opinion towards this problem.

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How to Legally Use Mickey Mouse Brand and FIgure in China?

By You Yunting

About one month before, the IPR Committee of Shanghai Bar Association invited the police officer from the Economic Investigating Squadron of Shanghai Police Department to deliver a speech on the criminal protection over IPR issues. And in the communication after the seminar, the police officer raised a question to the acceded lawyers, “The Shanghai Disney Land will be constructed several years later, and it’s foreseeable that there could be stores selling Mickey Mouse or other figures articles with no license thereby granted around the park. Yet, by then, the copyright protection term on Mickey could be expired, and so what measures could be taken to strike the unlicensed using or selling?”

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