C4IP Co-Chair and former USPTO Director Andrei Iancu, along with Mark Cohen, the former director of UC Berkeley’s Asia IP Project, recently published an opinion piece in the International Business Times focusing on China’s secretive policy of issuing anti-suit injunctions, which puts innovative American companies at a major disadvantage when fighting patent theft from Chinese competitors.
The anti-suit injunctions, which China has begun issuing regularly in patent lawsuits, require alleged cases of infringement by Chinese companies to be tried in Chinese courts. As Iancu and Cohen point out, this prevents victims from America and elsewhere from receiving fair compensation — and is a blatant violation of international law.
They also note that the Biden administration, unlike most of America’s allies, is turning a blind eye to this practice — a worrying development that allows China to continue intruding on U.S. sovereignty and weakening global IP protections for its own benefit.
Cohen and Iancu conclude: “We must work with our allies to hold China to basic standards of transparency, due process and non-interference with the parties and courts of our own legal systems… If we don’t act soon, the next time a U.S. lawyer wants to try a patent dispute he may have to travel to Beijing.”
Read the full op-ed here: https://www.ibtimes.com/why-us-helping-china-undermine-global-innovation-3731854