In the news: Top piracy cases, shadow banking in the spotlight and IPOs postponed

January 17, 2014 | BY

clpstaff &clp articles &

This week we looked at the leading copyright cases of 2013, concern mounted over shadow banking and five companies postponed their listings

Piracy cases

On December 30, the National Copyright Administration, National Internet Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Public Security held a briefing on the Sword Network Campaign. The China IPR blog prepared a list of the 10 most interesting cases, including ones involving Baidu being prosecuted for facilitating access to piracy websites, the sale of foreign ISO standards, a Taobao shop selling pirated Children's publications.


Source:

China IPR


The fact that this list was released by such a large group of government agencies shows encouraging cooperation in IP enforcement. The inclusion of both Baidu and Taobao highlights that no businesses were immune from the crackdown, even national or regional champtions. It also shows the challenges that these and other Chinese online businesses face as they make the move from relying on pirated content to moving to a more sustainable model based on copyright licensing.


More from CLP:

The importance of IP strategy

Why China's Copyright Law critics are wrong

Copyright administration gives in to musicians



Shadow banking

There has been a lot of coverage of shadow banking this week. The Wall Street Journal began with one article questioning whether the focus of China's government on reform had led them to ignore the problems of shadow banking and a second explaining how infighting between the People's Bank of China and the China Banking Regulatory Commission is hindering efforts to deal with the problem. Finally, the Financial Times has reported that ICBC has refused to bail out investors in a dud US$500 million investment product it distributed through its branches.

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