The Academic Exchanges of Sino-US Intellectual Property Lawyers

In the morning of June 20th, 2008, the delegation of AIPLA (American Intellectual Property Law Association) visited Shanghai Bar Association and Intellectual Property Law Committee, representatives has attended the forum in Shanghai Bar Association. During the session, deputies of China and US have introduced their own associations and committees, as well as back ground information of members who attended the meeting. Both parties have discussed some legal topics such as evidence of patent litigation and damage of compensation amount etc. Besides both sides pledged to strengthen the links between the two associations to promote the business exchanges and cooperation between China and US intellectual property rights lawyers.

The delegates of AIPLA who attended the meeting are all senior American intellectual property lawyers. Incumbent head of the delegation, Mr. Kenneth Krosin, the chairman of AIPLA far east committee, who is responsible for the exchanges of intellectual property sector and research, he is also the major law firm partner of the oldest US law firm Foley. President to be of the AIPLA on the second half year, Ms. Teresa Rea, an extremely influential intellectual property lawyers in States, has visited our IP law committee two years ago already. Also there were dozens of professional IP lawyers who attended the meeting, such as a well-known US intellectual property lawyer Mr. Alber Jacobs, who is also the current chairman of the committee of the Korean AIPLA; Mr. Federico Fraccaroli, Intellectual property department of Nokia Inc.etc.

Fu Qiangguo lawyer, director of Shanghai Bar Association Intellectual Property Law Committee and Si Weijiang lawyer, president of All-China lawyers Associations Committee intellectual property committee have presided over the meetings, members of China IP Law committee have also had heated discussion with American lawyers. Due to time, there was no deep discussion regarding Sino-US intellectual property lawyers' cooperation. As Chinese enterprises exporting products to States triggered by a growing trend of intellectual property litigation; importing of US products to China also encountered the same situation, which made both countries' lawyers wish to learn more legal system of other's. I personally hope that this type of meeting would be held regularly and use the discussion outcome to establish something similar as "Sino-US Intellectual Property Cases legal Service Index", a guiding documents for the industry itself, with an update annually. So the two country's IP lawyers could use his own respective expertise to provide efficient legal service in accordance with these cases.

Zhong Yi, Attorney at Law, Shanghai Runhe Law Firm
Member of the Shanghai Bar Association Intellectual Property Rights and Foreign-related Law Research Committee