Sino-Japanese IPR Memorandum of Understanding: What Does It All Mean?
September 3, 2009
Ministers from China and Japan have announced plans to cooperate on the protection of IP rights in an effort to strengthen economic stability in the region. The move could have a major impact on the laws and strategies of both jurisdictions.
Signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Sunday, economic ministers from China and Japan agreed to establish a working group to look into IP issues. “The agreement on IP rights protection signed by China and Japan is significant not only for the bilateral cooperation in the IP field, but also for the promotion of economic and technological cooperation between China and Japan,” says Wang Zhengfa, partner at Hylands Law Firm in Beijing.
Immediate results of an exchange of information could include stronger protection for geographical indications, such as those for Japanese brands that cannot be registered as a trademark in China, and vice versa. Additionally, states Danny Friedmann, consultant on Chinese IP rights and author of IP Dragon, Japan will be able to use the agreement in its fight against Chinese-manufactured counterfeit goods. “Japan can channel its frustrations and problems originating from Chinese imitations of Japanese products,” says Friedmann, “and China can profit from Japan’s successful experience in IP rights enforcement.”
The MOU between the two parties may also impact on China’s third amendment to the Chinese Trademark Law, due later this year. But as the first meeting of the working group is only pencilled in to happen by the end of the year, it may be some time before hard evidence of the agreement is seen. “An MOU is not binding,” notes Friedmann. “So this is part of soft diplomacy, to improve good will between the two nations.”
Source:Â http://www.worldtrademarkreview.com
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China’s Trade Numbers at January
February 18, 2009
Last week’s trade numbers from China could not have been more dismal. After declining by 2.8 per cent year on year in December, China’s exports plummeted 17.5 per cent in January, placing huge pressure on the country’s manufacturing sector. Already unemployment in China is surging.
Chinese import numbers are even more dismaying. After dropping 21.3 per cent in December, imports fell a staggering 43.1 per cent in January.
At first glance there seems to be a silver lining in the export numbers: they are not as bad as those reported by some other Asian countries. In December, for example, Taiwan’s exports fell by 42 per cent, South Korea’s by 17 per cent and Japan’s by 35 per cent, capping many months of contraction. Less developed Asian countries also performed worse than China, which suggests China may have increased its competitive edge over its trading rivals. But it is precisely this relative outperformance that indicates the severity of the adjustment yet to take place. China’s trade surplus for January was a mind-blowing $39.1bn (€31.1bn, £27.4bn), just under November’s all-time high of $40.1bn and edging out December’s $39bn for second place. In comparison, in the first half of 2008 China’s average monthly trade surplus was an already high $16.7bn. In the second half it surged to $32.9bn.
Pls read the rest of article at Financial Times
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Chinese economy where to go post-Olympics
September 28, 2008
As the 2008 Beijing Olympics ended in a splendor of fireworks, concerns over a post-Games downturn for the Chinese economy re-emerged.
History shows that some host countries had experienced post-Olympic declines because investment dropped, such as Tokyo and Seoul.
Japan witnessed a drastic fall in growth the year after the 1964 Games, down to 5.2 percent from the year-earlier 13.1 percent. The Republic of Korea saw the rate slip from 10.6 percent to 6.7 percent in 1989.
Will China follow the same pattern? The world ponders. You can read the rest of article published in China Daily here : News Analysis: Chinese economy where to go post-Olympics
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Free Parking Comes at a Price
September 2, 2008
UCLA urban planning professor Donald Shoup says we have too many parking spaces in this country, especially the cheap and free kind. He argues that we pay the price for it in many different ways. Shoup’s point is made in a new book, The High Cost of Free Parking.
The Car Explosion
Coming to grips with the parking problem is essential because the rest of the world is poised to repeat America’s mistakes. America adopted the car much faster and to a far greater extent than other nations, and many factors help to explain this phenomenon — abundant land, rapid population growth, low fuel prices, and high incomes, among others. Abundant free parking also contributes to our high demand for cars because it greatly reduces the cost of car ownership. And because we own so many cars, we need lots of land to park them. We can speculate about the amount of land the whole world will need for parking if other nations ever acquire as many cars as Americans owned at the end of the twentieth century.
The first American gasoline car was sold in February 1896. By 2000, Americans owned 771 motor vehicles per 1,000 persons… Apart from dips during the Depression, World War II, and the early 1990s, ownership rose rapidly… In 2000, France had the same vehicle-ownership rate as the U.S. in 1972, Denmark the same as the U.S. in 1961, and China the same as the U.S. in 1912.
China is now the world’s fourth-largest market for new cars (after the U.S., Japan and Germany), but the U.S. still added more than twice as many vehicles during the 1990s (29 million) as China owned in 2000 (13 million). Other nations are, however, gaining on the U.S. Since 1950 the vehicle population has grown more than twice as fast outside the U.S. as inside. And yet, taken together, in 2000 the world outside the U.S. owned only 89 vehicles per 1,000 persons — the U.S. rate in 1920. But just as the U.S. vehicle-ownership rate doubled in the five years after 1920, rapid growth may also occur soon in other countries.
The 6.1 billion people on earth in 2000 owned 735 million vehicles. Imagine what would happen if all the countries on earth ever achieve the same vehicle-ownership rate as the U.S. in 2000: there would be 4.7 billion vehicles even if the U.S. population does not increase. A parking lot big enough to hold 4.7 billion cars would occupy an area about the size of England or Greece. If there are four parking spaces per car (one at home, and three more at other destinations), 4.7 billion cars would require 19 billion parking spaces, which amounts to a parking lot about the size of France or Spain. More cars would also require more land for roads, gas stations, used car dealers, automobile graveyards, and tire dumps.
If the past trends in vehicle ownership continue, the world will have more than 4.7 billion cars well before the end of the twenty-first century. Even if the vehicle population grows by only 2 percent a year, it will increase from 735 million in 2000 to 5 billion in 2100. Can the world supply all the fuel needed to power 5 billion cars? Will humans be able to breathe the fumes coming out of 5 billion exhaust pipes? And where will 5 billion cars park?
These questions are not meant to sound alarmist. A simple projection is often a poor forecast because technology and policy can change. For example, horse-drawn carriages befouled cities a century ago. In New York City in 1900, horses deposited 2.5 million pounds of manure on the streets every day. Projected growth in transportation demand made a publich health disaster seem inevitable, but then the horseless carriage solved that problem. Now, horseless carriages create their own problems, but new solutions will arrive. Improved technology will increase fuel efficiency and reduce pollution emissions, but technology alone is unlikely to solve the parking problem. Regardless of how fuel efficient our cars are or how little pollution they emit, we will always need somewhere to park them, and the average car spends 95 percent of its life parked.
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China’s trade surplus down 9.6% in Jan.-July period
August 12, 2008
– China’s trade surplus fell to 123.72 billion U.S. dollars in the first seven months, down 13.1 billion U.S. dollars, or 9.6 percent year on year, the General Administration of Customs said on Monday.
Analysts said the fall was partly a result of China’s policies to tame surplus, but was also because of the rising prices of energy.
The European Union (EU) continued to be the country’s biggest trading partner, with two-way trade totaling 243.14 billion U.S. dollars, up 27.9 percent from January to July.
Exports to the EU rose 27.1 percent to 165.04 billion U.S. dollars, while imports grew 29.8 percent to 78.1 billion U.S. dollars, leaving a trade surplus of 86.94 billion U.S. dollars, up 24.9 percent year on year. The surplus growth, however, had decreased 29 percentage points.
Exports to the United States, the country’s second biggest trade partner, grew 9.9 percent to 140.39 billion U.S. dollars with a trade surplus of 91.67 billion U.S. dollars, up 3.8 percent year on year. The surplus growth, however, also declined by 15 percentage points.
Japan remained China’s No. 3 trade partner with bilateral trade totaling 154.93 billion U.S. dollars, up 19.2 percent.
Jan.-July trade exports to Japan reached 65.48 billion U.S. dollars, up 15.9 percent, while imports totaled 89.45 billion U.S. dollars, up 21.6 percent. This created a trade deficit of 23.98 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 7 billion U.S. dollars over the same period of last year.
The administration said the average prices of primary products imports had soared. The country’s imports grew drastically by 70.6percent to 221.65 billion U.S. dollars in the first seven months, 32.6 percent of the total imports in the same period.
China imported 24.94 million tons of coal during the seven months with its average price jumping 51.9 percent to 70 U.S. dollars per tonnage. Imported soy bean grew to 20.73 million tons with its average prices up 78 percent to 591.70 U.S. dollars per ton.
Source: Xinhua
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