E-commerce is rapidly growing in China with Chinese consumers already making up for almost half of global online retail sales. This development offers lots of lucrative business opportunities for European SMEs. When entering Chinese market, a Chinese top level domain name often helps to attract customers. In today’s blog post we therefore focus again on top level domain names’ registration in China.
Internet usage is booming in China. With more than 701 million ‘netizens’ (as of December 2016), China connects more people to the Internet than any other country. In fact, every fourth person on the Internet is from China. Facilitated by the increasing availability of broadband technology and the growing trend towards online shopping and purchasing, the Internet is an attractive business and marketing platform for many European SMEs. The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) has also now removed barriers to overseas companies and individuals to register domain names in China, and it is recommended that European SMEs take advantage of this if they are planning on entering the Chinese market or are already in China.
New and Less Restricted Domain Name Requirements
From May 2012, .cn and .中国 domain name registrations became available again for private individual registrations (both Chinese and overseas). The process takes a few weeks and currently costs €50-€100.
The following steps are required:
- Translate your domain names into Chinese and find an accredited registrar using either of these sources (domain name registration must be completed through an accredited registrar).
Continue reading “Registering New Top Level Domain Names in China” »
As more and more European SMEs embrace the popular e-commerce concept in China, they are also confronted with online counterfeiting problems. Today’s blog post discusses how European SMEs can monitor online selling sites and how they can start the notice and take down process to remove counterfeits from the most famous Chinese online e-commerce sites like Taobao and Alibaba. 
In today’s blog post we take a look at the recent developments in Vietnamese IP regulations concerning Internet Domain names and analyse the implications of these regulations to the European SMEs. 
In Malaysia, no pure information can be considered property. However, as a party to TRIPS and other agreements, Malaysia does have laws which prevent the unauthorised disclosure of information. This information is commonly referred to as “trade secrets,” although it is called “confidential information” in Malaysian law. This definition means that trade secrets cannot be proactively registered, but can form the basis of action taken against others. Confidential information in Malaysia can also take the form of virtually any other confidential information which was secret and protected by contractual agreements.
An industrial design is the ornamental or aesthetic aspect of a product and is handled by the Industrial Designs Registry at the Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia.