Peter Ollier and Janice Qu, Hong Kong
"Trade mark holders in China will get better protection in the future, with better enforcement and higher damages," according to Thomas Pattloch, IP Officer in the EU Delegation in Beijing
Pattloch was speaking at a session on the future of IP protection in China during the 5th Annual Asia-Pacific IP Forum in Hong Kong, which was organised by Managing IP and Asialaw magazines.
But he added that patent protection in China was unlikely to go beyond the protections outlined in the TRIPs Agreement. "China regards a broad scope of patent protection as not in the national interest" he said.
When discussing patent protection in China, Pattloch also referred to the controversial Chint v Schneider case, in which Schneider Electric, a French electronics maker, was ordered to pay $45 million in damages for infringing a utility model patent. In China utility model patents are...