In the news: Yahoo! exits China, trade secret law gets push and the local seed industry shakes up

Yahoo! folds China operations

Yahoo! confirmed last Wednesday that it is closing its office in China, a move expected to lay off around 300 people. The company offered no local products and its Beijing office, its only physical presence in the country, served as an R&D centre. The closure comes amid increasing pressure on the company to reduce expenses. Yahoo has cut about 600 jobs in the past six months, mostly in Canada and India, and has also closed its Jordan office. There is speculation whether the company's packing up has something to do with the government recently requiring foreign tech companies to hand over audits and source codes. But, considering its weak performance as of late, Yahoo probably couldn't justify maintaining a costly R&D facility in China anyway.

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Experts urge legislators to draft trade secret law

Chinese experts have urged lawmakers to draft a legislation to protect trade secrets amid recent increases in infringements and violations. The country has special laws on trademark, copyright and patents, but none on trade secrets among its IP laws. There are trade secret provisions in laws against unfair competition and labour and contract laws, but these are too general and problems from compensation standards to plaintiff challenges in providing evidence need to be addressed, said an IP judge with the Fujian Higher People's Court. Trade secret protection legislation was once part of the work plan in the 1990s, but little progress has been made over the past 20 years. It is said that China will accelerate research this year. Trade secret misappropriation is common in Asia and China (note the 2013 Novartis and Eli Lilly cases). A unified and comprehensive trade secret law would provide better protection for companies, especially in the tech and pharma industries. Read this exclusive MediaTek interview to see how the law was drafted and put into effect in Taiwan.

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China seeks to develop global seed power

China needs a seed developer that can hold its ground against global giants like Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta before the market opens up to foreign companies. But local producers are now too small and scattered to control the biotechnology needed to compete. China has already begun to shake up the industry with SOEs leading the charge. It is pushing domestic companies to triple their agricultural tech patents by 2020 and slashed the number of local seed companies to 5,200 last year from 8,700 in 2011. Chinese companies lag behind in terms of R&D – In 2013, Longping, China's largest producer with a market value of US$3.26 billion, spent less than 1% of what Monsanto spends on R&D. All this hustle will be in vain unless they catch up before the market opens.

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Pollution task forces set to enforce Environmental Protection Law

China has assembled 10 inspection teams to enforce the Environmental Protection Law that was implemented this year. Regular and random inspections will be carried out at companies' waste treatment facilities and authorities will use satellites and drones to monitor pollution sources. A special task force was also set up after it was revealed that there were instances of power abuse in the environmental impact assessment of infrastructure projects and supervision. It all sounds like a solid plan, but will it work in practice? There have been problems even collecting pollution discharge fees from and imposing penalties on companies that have already been caught – maybe the authorities need to enforce this before trying to catch more violators. Otherwise some may just fall through the net.

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