350,000 free songs

US search engine Google Inc last week launched a legal music search service in China that allows users to download licensed songs for free. This is aimed at helping the online search giant better compete with domestic market leader Baidu Inc. The new service, in which Google partnered with Top100.cn, a Chinese music website co-founded by basketball star Yao Ming, offers downloads of about 350,000 songs from both foreign and Chinese artists. It said the number of songs on offer would rise to 1.1 million in the next few months.

Lee Kaifu, president of Google China, said the new service will help the company to fill the "last lost piece" of its business in the country, where Baidu Inc takes up about two thirds of the market share.

39.2 billion yuan

The Beijing Railway Bureau signed a deal with CNR Corporation Limited to purchase 100 high-speed CRH trains for 39.2 billion yuan. The trains will be developed domestically and possess intellectual property rights. The trains are expected to deliver from 2010.

1.12m applications

The State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) received 1.12 million patent applications for inventions in the 2003-08 period, of which telecommunication technology accounted for the most, or 371,000 applications.

35,000 yuan claimed

Hangzhou Municipal Intermediate People's Court recently accepted the country's first case involving the unauthorized use of background music in hotels and restaurants, according to the Music Copyright Society of China (MCSC). In its bill of complaint, MCSC (plaintiff) claimed that Hangzhou Hyatt Regency Hotel and Hangzhou 900bowls Restaurant (defendants) used music works under the management of MCSC as their background music for a long time, without the grant of MCSC and never paying any copyright usage fee. So the plaintiff asked the defendants to stop playing the unauthorized music and compensate 35,000 yuan.

10,219 patent attorneys

By the end of January, 10,219 people had obtained the license of patent attorney in China, 5,845 of whom now work for 717 patent firms. From April 1985 when the patent law went into force, to October 2008, patent firms handled 3.32 million of the total 4.65 million patent applications on behalf of the proposers.

17 infringement claims

China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) sued 17 gas stations in Wuxi, East China's Jiangsu province, for infringing its trademark of PetroChina, gem flower works, logo and figurative elements. With the intermediation of the court, 12 of the 17 companies have so far settled with CNPC.

428 yuan cut

The National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance jointly enacted a circular, approving the State Intellectual Property Office's suggestion of reducing and adjusting several patent cooperation treaty (PCT) fees. During the international procedure of PCT application, the fee will decrease from 8,555 yuan to 8,127 yuan if the application document has less than 30 pages. If the applicant is a natural from a country with national income per capita of less than $3,000 per year, the international application fee and formality fee will be cut 90 percent as compared with 75 percent previously.

(China Daily 04/06/2009 page11)