|
Entrapment on Infringement of IPR
In civil infringement cases in China, the infringement of intellectual properties is more common and is hard to discover as entrapment exists primarily in this field. Since there is no laws and regulations in China on the evidentiary effect of entrapment, it depends on some judicial interpretations and adjudications. Under the Rules on Evidence in Civil Proceedings, the Supreme People's Court provides that any evidence, which is obtained by invading others' legal interest or violating prohibitive norms of law, cannot be used as a basis to determine evidentiary effect of entrapment. The court further ruled that entrapment is legal under certain conditions. However, not all evidence obtained through entrapment should be admitted. It is also dependent on the intent for infringement, the existence of other evidence to corroborate that the actor has committed the infringing act, and whether the scope of entrapment is within the limit of the previous acts of the actor.
The above decision was given in a case: Founder Group vs. Beijing Hi-Tech Technology Ltd. on the asserted infringement of computer software copyrights. An employee of Founder disguised as a common buyer, purchased a phototypesetter from Hi-Tech and Hi-Tech installed in the set unlicensed copies of Founder Century RIP and Beijing Founder Postscript Chinese fonts and notorized the purchasing and installation process. During the first instance trial, Intermediate People's court of Beijing approved of the way Founder obtained the evidence, deciding that Hi-Tech should stop the infringing act and make a formal apology and compensate Founder for the economic losses. Discontented with the decision, Hi-Tech appealed to the High People's Court which determined that Founder's entrapment of Hi-Tech had violated the fairness doctrine, and if entrapment was widely employed, normal market order would suffer and refused to Founder's claim of compensation by Hi-Tech. After the second-instance trial, Founder managed to collect the evidence of HI-Tech sales of infringing software and submitted it to the Supreme People's Court for a retrial which ruled that the entrapment evidence of Founder was legitimate.
For any
queries relating to our services and costs, please feel free to
contact us at info@iprfirm.com.
IPR
FIRM.COM - Online IPR Law Firm, India – Trade Marks, Copyright Registration,
Delhi, India
| | |
(c) IPR Firm, 2007.
|
