“Parties usually rely on the PRC IP laws, dissemination rights, the Supreme People's Court's interpretation on disputes between internet service providers, and myriad other regulations, but when it comes down to the facts of the case, the issues of technology and technicality emerge. These Guidelines are aimed at helping courts and parties determine the specific infringement criteria.”

The Guidelines are divided into three sections, each devoted to an area of network-related IP.

Copyright

The Guidelines make it clear that the defendant—the service provider—bears the burden of proof for showing that it has only acted as a platform, Feng said. They set out specific circumstances for platforms to explain that they did not actually commit the infringing act but merely provided “network technical services.”

Specifically, Article 6 provides three criteria (plus “other factors”) for defendants to prove that they have provided information storage space. One being that they are able to come up with the uploader's user IDs, registration information, IP address and contact details. “This allows the defendants to say they aren't the ones uploading this content, and they should have a clear indication on their website that they are merely the storage or information provider,” said Feng.

And Article 7 sets three factors to consider in determining whether the platform has provided linking or hosting services, such as being able to prove that the works, recordings or publications are hosted on a third party website and are redirected from the defendant's platform.

The Guidelines also focus on the concept of division of labor, which refers to a form of collaboration between the platform and content provider. “If the judge has reason to believe that both parties have jointly and intentionally published the infringing content, both will be deemed directly responsible,” said Estella Chen, partner at Han Kun Law Offices in Beijing.

Common types of division of labor include arrangements (in most cases in the form of cooperative agreements) between audio/video providers and platforms that provide infringing works, performances or recordings, and collaborations between game developers and game platforms that provide infringing games.

“Under the division of labor approach, the platform operators cannot defend themselves by claiming that they were merely providing internet technology services,” said Chen.

Trademark

“This section is related to assessing the liability of the marketplace,” said Feng. “Specifically, the liability of the online platform operator if it fails to take down infringing content even after it has been notified and requested by the IP owner.”

The safe harbor application is the most striking aspect of this section, said Chen. “The concept is widely used in copyright infringement, but this is the first time the principle is applied in trademark cases,” she said.

Article 22 lists the information that rights holders should provide to platform operators when notifying them of trademark infringement. It includes the brand owner's name and contact details, location of the infringing content, proof of trademark ownership and facts of infringement, and a declaration guaranteeing the authenticity of the notification. The e-commerce service provider is required to take the necessary measures, such as removing or blocking the link in a timely fashion.

Article 26 of the Guidelines sets out seven factors (plus “other factors”) to establish the operators' awareness of an online seller infringing others' trademarks. These include whether the platform provider has taken the initiative to edit, rank, or recommend the allegedly infringing content, gained economic benefits or failed to take reasonable measures against repeating infringers, as well as whether well-known goods or services were being offered at obviously unreasonable prices or the content contains self-admission of infringement.

Feng said these are important aspects to take into account. “For instance, if the operator collects commission, charges service fees or shares proceeds from every transaction, it has a higher duty to control the marketplace. And some fake goods sellers openly promote their products as being AAA quality or 'as good as' or 'better than' the real thing, so this adds to the reasons for knowing or should have known the items were counterfeit or likely unauthorized.”

Price can be a clear indicator of genuineness. A brand owner can, along with providing a list of authorized retailers and distributors, ask the platform to set up a filtering system and remove any goods under a certain benchmark value as they are likely to be counterfeit. But the operator may insist that some of these are merely second-hand products and doing so may impact honest sellers who aren't offering fakes.

“These factors make it very clear that the platform operators are liable if they had known, or should have known, about the infringement,” said Deacons' Zheng.

Unfair competition

IP cases that do not involve rights specified in the PRC Trademark Law, PRC Patent Law or PRC Copyright Law are pursued under the PRC Anti-unfair Competition Law (mainly Article 2).

The third section of the Guidelines, devoted to online unfair competition, remains relatively broad.

It heavily emphasizes business ethics and acts of good faith recognized in the industry, such as not harming or misleading consumers and damaging competitors, said Zheng. “Recognizing these basic standards of acceptable conduct is important as the internet marketplace and its business models are developing very rapidly.”

Article 35 lists the types of acts that impair these rights and disturb markets, including using website contents to increase transactional opportunities enough to divert traffic from the original website, modifying drop-down or predictive keywords in search bars, and inserting unauthorized ads such as pop-ups.

“It basically goes against any act of improperly diverting, intercepting or stealing another's business,” said Hogan Lovells' Feng. One recent case that highlighted the keyword issue was Baidu v. Sogou, where Sogou's Chinese character input method replaced the predictive search function of Baidu's search engine, redirecting users to Sogou's own results.

The anti-unfair competition section also covers false advertising (Article 36), commercial defamation (Article 37), and search keyword bidding/paid listing (Article 38).

By Katherine Jo

北京市高级人民法院在 2016 年 4 月 13 日发布了《关于涉及网络知识产权案件的审理指南》。该指南概述了北京法院在网上版权、商标和不正当竞争案件方面的审理经验，并为审讯此类案件的法官提供具有参考价值的实践提示。

的近律师行香港合伙人郑慧明表示，北京高级法院一直非常积极于收集业内意见，以及向法院发布指导意见，而且一名北京法官最近宣布 2015 年的互联网相关 IP 案件数量总体增长了 24%。

“北京法院是开创性IP 案件审理方面的先锋，” 霍金路伟国际律师事务所上海IP 诉讼合伙人冯臻表示，“即使该指南不具有强制性约束力，其他法院也绝对会将其视为权威意见。”

郑慧明认为，互联网侵权在中国一直是难以解决的棘手问题。

“相关各方通常依赖中国IP 法律、传播权利、最高人民法院有关互联网服务提供商纠纷的解释以及其他众多法规，但具体到案件事实时，就出现技术和专业问题了。这些指南旨在帮助法院和相关各方确定具体的侵权标准。”

该指南分为三个部分，分别涉及不同的网络相关 IP 领域。

版权

冯臻表示，该指南明确指出被告方服务提供商承担举证责任，即须证明其仅发挥平台作用。其中规定了具体情况让平台能说明其未实施侵权行为，而只是提供“网络技术服务”。

具体而言，第 6 条规定了被告方证明自己提供信息存储空间的三项标准（以及“其他因素”）。其中一项为能够提供上传者的用户 ID、注册信息、IP 地址和联系详情。 “这使被告方能够说明其不是相关内容的上传者，并且应在其网站上明确说明其仅为存储或信息提供者，”冯臻说道。

而第 7 条规定了在确定平台是提供链接还是托管服务时的三项考虑要素，例如能够证明相关作品、录制或发布内容托管于第三方网站，且重定向自被告方的平台。

该指南还关注劳动分工概念，即平台和内容提供者之间的合作形式。 “如果法官有理由认为双方共同且故意发布侵权内容，则双方都将视为负有直接责任，”汉坤律师事务所北京合伙人陈容表示。

常见的劳动分工类型包括音频/视频提供者和平台之间关于提供侵权作品、演出或录制内容的协议（在大部分情况下为合作协议形式），以及游戏开发商和游戏平台之间关于提供侵权游戏的合作。

“基于此劳动分工方法，平台运营商无法通过主张其仅提供互联网技术服务来进行辩护，”陈容说道。

商标

“此部分有关评估市场责任，”冯臻表示，“具体而言，即如果网上平台运营商在收到 IP 所有人的通知和要求后未撤下侵权内容，则负有的责任。”

陈容则表示，“安全港”应用是此部分中最受关注的方面。 “此概念广泛应用于版权侵权领域，但在商标案件中应用尚属首次，”她说道。

第 22 条列出了权利人应在通知平台运营商相关商标侵权时向其提供的信息。其中包括品牌所有者的姓名和联系详情、侵权内容所在位置、商标权权属证明和侵权事实，以及对通知内容真实性负责的声明。电子商务服务提供商需要采取必要措施，例如及时删除或断开相关链接。

该指南的第 26 条规定了确认运营商知道网络卖家侵犯他人商标权的七项要素（以及“其他因素”）。其中包括平台运营商是否主动对被控侵权交易信息进行了编辑、排名、推荐，获取经济利益，或者对重复侵权行为未采取相应的合理措施，以及以明显不合理的价格出售或者提供知名商品或者服务，或者信息中存在侵权自认。

冯臻认为，这些都是需要考虑的重要方面。 “例如，如果运营商收取佣金、服务费或者每次交易的收益分红，则具有较大责任来管控市场。而且一些假冒商品的卖家往往宣传其产品为AAA 级或者与正品具有同等质量或更加优质，因此较易于知道或应知此类商品为假货或很可能无授权。”

价格也是真假正伪的明确指标。品牌所有者可能会在提供授权零售商和经销商名单后，要求平台设置过滤系统，并移除任何低于特定基准价值的商品，因为此类商品很可能为假货。但运营商可能主张其中某些商品为二手物品，上述做法可能对未销售假货的诚实卖家造成影响。

“基于这些因素，如果平台运营商已知或应知侵权事宜，则显然负有责任，” 的近律师行的郑慧明说道。

不正当竞争

对于不涉及《中华人民共和国商标法》、《中华人民共和国专利法》或《中华人民共和国版权法》所述权利的IP 案件，则依据《中华人民共和国反不正当竞争法》（主要为第2条）进行审理。

该指南的第三部分正是针对网上不正当竞争，所涉范围相对较为广泛。

郑慧明表示，其中重点强调业内的商业道德和诚实信用行为，例如不损害或误导消费者，以及不损害竞争对手。 “随着互联网市场及其业务模式快速发展，识别这些认可行为的基础标准非常重要，”她说道。

第35 条列出了损害此类权利和扰乱市场的行为类型，包括使用网站内容来增加交易机会，并达到从原始网站分散流量的程度；修改搜索栏中的下拉提示词；以及插入弹出窗口等形式的未经授权广告。

“基本上涵盖了所有不当分散、截取或盗取其他方业务的行为，” 霍金路伟国际律师事务所的冯臻表示。有关关键词问题的一个近期案件为百度诉搜狗案，在该案件中，搜狗用自己的中文输入法替换了百度搜索引擎的预测搜索功能，将用户重定向至搜狗提供的搜索结果。

此反不正当竞争部分还涉及虚假广告（第 36 条）、商业诋毁（第 37 条）和搜索关键词竞价/付费排名（第 38 条）。

（作者：赵修敏）

The Beijing Higher People's Court issued the Guidelines for the Hearing of Network-related Intellectual Property Cases (Guidelines) on April 13, 2016. These summarize the experiences of the city's courts with respect to tackling online copyright, trademark and unfair competition issues, and provide practical tips for judges to consider when hearing such cases.

The Beijing high court has always been very active in collecting opinions from the industry and in releasing guidelines for courts to follow, said Catherine Zheng, a Hong Kong-based partner at Deacons, adding that a Beijing judge recently announced a 24% overall increase in the number of internet-related IP cases in 2015.

“The Beijing court is a pioneer in terms of hearing groundbreaking IP cases,” said Katie Feng, an IP litigation partner at Hogan Lovells in Shanghai. “And even though the Guidelines aren't mandatorily binding, the other courts will definitely view them as coming from a position of authority.”

Internet infringement has always been a tricky subject in China, said Zheng.

“Parties usually rely on the PRC IP laws, dissemination rights, the Supreme People's Court's interpretation on disputes between internet service providers, and myriad other regulations, but when it comes down to the facts of the case, the issues of technology and technicality emerge. These Guidelines are aimed at helping courts and parties determine the specific infringement criteria.”

The Guidelines are divided into three sections, each devoted to an area of network-related IP.

Copyright

The Guidelines make it clear that the defendant—the service provider—bears the burden of proof for showing that it has only acted as a platform, Feng said. They set out specific circumstances for platforms to explain that they did not actually commit the infringing act but merely provided “network technical services.”

Specifically, Article 6 provides three criteria (plus “other factors”) for defendants to prove that they have provided information storage space. One being that they are able to come up with the uploader's user IDs, registration information, IP address and contact details. “This allows the defendants to say they aren't the ones uploading this content, and they should have a clear indication on their website that they are merely the storage or information provider,” said Feng.

And Article 7 sets three factors to consider in determining whether the platform has provided linking or hosting services, such as being able to prove that the works, recordings or publications are hosted on a third party website and are redirected from the defendant's platform.

The Guidelines also focus on the concept of division of labor, which refers to a form of collaboration between the platform and content provider. “If the judge has reason to believe that both parties have jointly and intentionally published the infringing content, both will be deemed directly responsible,” said Estella Chen, partner at Han Kun Law Offices in Beijing.

Common types of division of labor include arrangements (in most cases in the form of cooperative agreements) between audio/video providers and platforms that provide infringing works, performances or recordings, and collaborations between game developers and game platforms that provide infringing games.

“Under the division of labor approach, the platform operators cannot defend themselves by claiming that they were merely providing internet technology services,” said Chen.

Trademark

“This section is related to assessing the liability of the marketplace,” said Feng. “Specifically, the liability of the online platform operator if it fails to take down infringing content even after it has been notified and requested by the IP owner.”

The safe harbor application is the most striking aspect of this section, said Chen. “The concept is widely used in copyright infringement, but this is the first time the principle is applied in trademark cases,” she said.

Article 22 lists the information that rights holders should provide to platform operators when notifying them of trademark infringement. It includes the brand owner's name and contact details, location of the infringing content, proof of trademark ownership and facts of infringement, and a declaration guaranteeing the authenticity of the notification. The e-commerce service provider is required to take the necessary measures, such as removing or blocking the link in a timely fashion.

Article 26 of the Guidelines sets out seven factors (plus “other factors”) to establish the operators' awareness of an online seller infringing others' trademarks. These include whether the platform provider has taken the initiative to edit, rank, or recommend the allegedly infringing content, gained economic benefits or failed to take reasonable measures against repeating infringers, as well as whether well-known goods or services were being offered at obviously unreasonable prices or the content contains self-admission of infringement.

Feng said these are important aspects to take into account. “For instance, if the operator collects commission, charges service fees or shares proceeds from every transaction, it has a higher duty to control the marketplace. And some fake goods sellers openly promote their products as being AAA quality or 'as good as' or 'better than' the real thing, so this adds to the reasons for knowing or should have known the items were counterfeit or likely unauthorized.”

Price can be a clear indicator of genuineness. A brand owner can, along with providing a list of authorized retailers and distributors, ask the platform to set up a filtering system and remove any goods under a certain benchmark value as they are likely to be counterfeit. But the operator may insist that some of these are merely second-hand products and doing so may impact honest sellers who aren't offering fakes.

“These factors make it very clear that the platform operators are liable if they had known, or should have known, about the infringement,” said Deacons' Zheng.

Unfair competition

IP cases that do not involve rights specified in the PRC Trademark Law, PRC Patent Law or PRC Copyright Law are pursued under the PRC Anti-unfair Competition Law (mainly Article 2).

The third section of the Guidelines, devoted to online unfair competition, remains relatively broad.

It heavily emphasizes business ethics and acts of good faith recognized in the industry, such as not harming or misleading consumers and damaging competitors, said Zheng. “Recognizing these basic standards of acceptable conduct is important as the internet marketplace and its business models are developing very rapidly.”

Article 35 lists the types of acts that impair these rights and disturb markets, including using website contents to increase transactional opportunities enough to divert traffic from the original website, modifying drop-down or predictive keywords in search bars, and inserting unauthorized ads such as pop-ups.

“It basically goes against any act of improperly diverting, intercepting or stealing another's business,” said Hogan Lovells' Feng. One recent case that highlighted the keyword issue was Baidu v. Sogou, where Sogou's Chinese character input method replaced the predictive search function of Baidu's search engine, redirecting users to Sogou's own results.

The anti-unfair competition section also covers false advertising (Article 36), commercial defamation (Article 37), and search keyword bidding/paid listing (Article 38).

By Katherine Jo

北京市高级人民法院在 2016 年 4 月 13 日发布了《关于涉及网络知识产权案件的审理指南》。该指南概述了北京法院在网上版权、商标和不正当竞争案件方面的审理经验，并为审讯此类案件的法官提供具有参考价值的实践提示。

的近律师行香港合伙人郑慧明表示，北京高级法院一直非常积极于收集业内意见，以及向法院发布指导意见，而且一名北京法官最近宣布 2015 年的互联网相关 IP 案件数量总体增长了 24%。

“北京法院是开创性IP 案件审理方面的先锋，” 霍金路伟国际律师事务所上海IP 诉讼合伙人冯臻表示，“即使该指南不具有强制性约束力，其他法院也绝对会将其视为权威意见。”

郑慧明认为，互联网侵权在中国一直是难以解决的棘手问题。

“相关各方通常依赖中国IP 法律、传播权利、最高人民法院有关互联网服务提供商纠纷的解释以及其他众多法规，但具体到案件事实时，就出现技术和专业问题了。这些指南旨在帮助法院和相关各方确定具体的侵权标准。”

该指南分为三个部分，分别涉及不同的网络相关 IP 领域。

版权

冯臻表示，该指南明确指出被告方服务提供商承担举证责任，即须证明其仅发挥平台作用。其中规定了具体情况让平台能说明其未实施侵权行为，而只是提供“网络技术服务”。

具体而言，第 6 条规定了被告方证明自己提供信息存储空间的三项标准（以及“其他因素”）。其中一项为能够提供上传者的用户 ID、注册信息、IP 地址和联系详情。 “这使被告方能够说明其不是相关内容的上传者，并且应在其网站上明确说明其仅为存储或信息提供者，”冯臻说道。

而第 7 条规定了在确定平台是提供链接还是托管服务时的三项考虑要素，例如能够证明相关作品、录制或发布内容托管于第三方网站，且重定向自被告方的平台。

该指南还关注劳动分工概念，即平台和内容提供者之间的合作形式。 “如果法官有理由认为双方共同且故意发布侵权内容，则双方都将视为负有直接责任，”汉坤律师事务所北京合伙人陈容表示。

常见的劳动分工类型包括音频/视频提供者和平台之间关于提供侵权作品、演出或录制内容的协议（在大部分情况下为合作协议形式），以及游戏开发商和游戏平台之间关于提供侵权游戏的合作。

“基于此劳动分工方法，平台运营商无法通过主张其仅提供互联网技术服务来进行辩护，”陈容说道。

商标

“此部分有关评估市场责任，”冯臻表示，“具体而言，即如果网上平台运营商在收到 IP 所有人的通知和要求后未撤下侵权内容，则负有的责任。”

陈容则表示，“安全港”应用是此部分中最受关注的方面。 “此概念广泛应用于版权侵权领域，但在商标案件中应用尚属首次，”她说道。

第 22 条列出了权利人应在通知平台运营商相关商标侵权时向其提供的信息。其中包括品牌所有者的姓名和联系详情、侵权内容所在位置、商标权权属证明和侵权事实，以及对通知内容真实性负责的声明。电子商务服务提供商需要采取必要措施，例如及时删除或断开相关链接。

该指南的第 26 条规定了确认运营商知道网络卖家侵犯他人商标权的七项要素（以及“其他因素”）。其中包括平台运营商是否主动对被控侵权交易信息进行了编辑、排名、推荐，获取经济利益，或者对重复侵权行为未采取相应的合理措施，以及以明显不合理的价格出售或者提供知名商品或者服务，或者信息中存在侵权自认。

冯臻认为，这些都是需要考虑的重要方面。 “例如，如果运营商收取佣金、服务费或者每次交易的收益分红，则具有较大责任来管控市场。而且一些假冒商品的卖家往往宣传其产品为AAA 级或者与正品具有同等质量或更加优质，因此较易于知道或应知此类商品为假货或很可能无授权。”

价格也是真假正伪的明确指标。品牌所有者可能会在提供授权零售商和经销商名单后，要求平台设置过滤系统，并移除任何低于特定基准价值的商品，因为此类商品很可能为假货。但运营商可能主张其中某些商品为二手物品，上述做法可能对未销售假货的诚实卖家造成影响。

“基于这些因素，如果平台运营商已知或应知侵权事宜，则显然负有责任，” 的近律师行的郑慧明说道。

不正当竞争

对于不涉及《中华人民共和国商标法》、《中华人民共和国专利法》或《中华人民共和国版权法》所述权利的IP 案件，则依据《中华人民共和国反不正当竞争法》（主要为第2条）进行审理。

该指南的第三部分正是针对网上不正当竞争，所涉范围相对较为广泛。

郑慧明表示，其中重点强调业内的商业道德和诚实信用行为，例如不损害或误导消费者，以及不损害竞争对手。 “随着互联网市场及其业务模式快速发展，识别这些认可行为的基础标准非常重要，”她说道。

第35 条列出了损害此类权利和扰乱市场的行为类型，包括使用网站内容来增加交易机会，并达到从原始网站分散流量的程度；修改搜索栏中的下拉提示词；以及插入弹出窗口等形式的未经授权广告。

“基本上涵盖了所有不当分散、截取或盗取其他方业务的行为，” 霍金路伟国际律师事务所的冯臻表示。有关关键词问题的一个近期案件为百度诉搜狗案，在该案件中，搜狗用自己的中文输入法替换了百度搜索引擎的预测搜索功能，将用户重定向至搜狗提供的搜索结果。

此反不正当竞争部分还涉及虚假广告（第 36 条）、商业诋毁（第 37 条）和搜索关键词竞价/付费排名（第 38 条）。

（作者：赵修敏）