As 2015 marks the 10th anniversary of the EU-China IP Cooperation Dialogue Mechanism, the European Chamber is going to organise an award ceremony to recognise China’s most IP-friendly regions, which will take place in March 2016.

The European Chamber, in close consultation with our Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Working Group, has defined five evaluation indicators which will make up the award categories:

1. Transparency: this word can be applied in the judging criteria in different ways: (1) are judgements or administrative decisions published and accessible on the Internet? (2) do the enforcing administrative authorities treat the IP owner as the victim and allow their active participation in judicial proceedings?
2. Efficiency: measures the level of availability, speed and thoroughness of enforcement authorities in a given region.
3. Cooperation: takes into consideration the level of cooperation between the different enforcement authorities. This factor is often the key to a successful case.
4. Deterrence: measures the ratio between the ‘size’ of a given case and the corresponding penalty/damages handed down at the end of the enforcement procedure.
5. Fairness: refers to the authorities—mainly judges—exercising discretion to make full use of the law in a ‘constructive’ way in order to obtain a fair result; this is the opposite of a ‘restrictive’ approach, which may still be within the boundaries of the law but leave a feeling of unfairness.

The European Chamber is asking our members to nominate regions in China based on these five award categories. In particular we are inviting members to submit detailed reasons—including actual case studies—to illustrate why they made their choice. Once received, the nomination forms will be submitted to a judging committee who will select the winning regions judged to have demonstrated outstanding performance in relation to IP in China. Government officials representing the province, municipality or autonomous region will then be invited to attend the award ceremony in Beijing.

To learn more about these awards please email Daniel Pedraza.