China confident about intellectual property rights of high-speed railways (2)

Focus Three: Will China's overseas patent application be challenged?

Response: The overseas patent application of China's enterprises is right and legal.

According to a report issued by Japan's "Asahi Shimbun" on July 5, Tadaharu Ohashi, president of Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. said, "If the content of the overseas tenet application of China's high-speed railway contravenes the Shinkansen Line technology export contract signed by China and the Kawasaki Heavy Industry, Japan will have to accuse China."

Regarding the report, Wang said, "It is right and legal that China's enterprises apply tenets for their related high-speed railway technologies. The application is for better promoting the innovation, transfer and spread of the high-speed railway technologies and for better serving the entire human race. We are legal and confident."

Wang also said China currently has established more than 100 high-speed railway construction standard specifications, covering the six important systems of public works and projects, traction power supply, communication signal, system device, operation control and passenger service, and possessed a set of internationally-advanced high-speed technical standard systems and integrated engineering technology kits.

According to preliminary statistics, China's high-speed railway has already successfully applied 1,900 tenets and is applying 481 tenets. China's high-speed railway has never had any intellectual property right disputes with any foreign company.

It is known that U.S.-based General Electric and China South Locomotive & Rolling Stock Co., Ltd. conducted wide exchanges on the establishment of a joint venture and technical cooperation last year that did cover technology. GE's legal team concluded based on massive research that there was no obstacle to applying China South Locomotive & Rolling Stock Co., Ltd.'s technology in the U.S. market. Both sides signed an agreement on December 2010, under which, China South Locomotive & Rolling Stock Co., Ltd. will transfer its independent EMU train technology to its joint venture with GE in the United States.

Three basic factors determine whether China has independent intellectual property rights in EMU trains: innovation, independence and patents. "China's EMU trains have its unique features and come with independent intellectual property rights, particularly in major techniques," said Zhou Li, deputy director of passenger car department of the transportation bureau under the Ministry of Railways.

Wang said that similar to Japan's success in the past in doubling the train speed to 200 kilometers per hour based on the technology introduced from Europe, today's China has raised the speed level of the world's high-speed train technology from 250 kilometers per hour to 350 kilometers per hour, both of which are significant improvements in global railway development.

Both improvements were made based on the tenet of the intellectual property rights clauses in the international law – desiring to reduce distortions and impediments to international trade, and taking into account the need to promote effective and adequate protection of intellectual property rights, and to ensure that measures and procedures to enforce intellectual property rights do not themselves become barriers to legitimate trade.

By Lu Yanan from People's Daily and the article is translated by People's Daily Online.
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