Interview: Meeting the burden of proof

What is the general structure of Weichai Power's legal department?

Weichai's legal team consists of approximately 40 lawyers who are qualified in areas where the company maintains significant operations. Weichai's legal team at the group-level takes care of most of the legal work within the group, and it also oversees the work of legal teams at subsidiary levels. While generally lawyers focus on legal work in their specialised areas, like corporate, IP and litigation, they do work closely with each other on major projects and transactions.

What have been some of the major legal challenges you have faced when it comes to R&D in China?

As with other technology-intense businesses in China, we also face critical IP infringement issues. For example, the last few years have seen Weichai gradually increase its collaboration with third-party engineering consultants from home and abroad in R&D activities. Coupled with such a trend, we have seen in several cases jointly-developed technologies leaked to competitors, despite having taken confidentiality steps. When this happens, it is often very difficult for the infringed party to discharge its burden of proof. Further, the lack of experience in patent infringement cases on the part of Chinese courts in many regions and the lack of discovery procedures for establishing the sales volume of infringing products have also caused difficulties when it comes to protecting our IP.

Weichai recently signed an agreement with Ferrari. How will this affect your work and what challenges do you anticipate?

Apart from the Weichai sponsorship established under this agreement, the parties have a common interest to expand their cooperation to technology development and market exploration in the years to come. When this is implemented, Weichai's legal team will be expected to help establish a mutually favourable mode of cooperation that furthers the existing sponsorship relationship between the parties. From the legal point of view, the biggest challenge for Weichai would still be how to protect jointly-developed technology from infringement.

What sort of IP strategy do you employ in China to protect your own IP?

Weichai is mindful of potential patent infringements in its R&D activities. It will continue to take substantial precautionary measures, like patent search, in the early stages of product development. We have undertaken various measures in response to increased IP infringements, like implementing periodic performance audits and reviews on agents, contractors and service providers and forming joint task forces with government authorities for investigating and cracking down on infringing activities.