International Patent Rights Harmonisation

Weinian Hu is a research fellow at the Centre for Private and Economic Law, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. A Chinese national from Shanghai, Dr Hu’s career has bridged Asia and Europe at the intersection of academia, diplomacy and industry. In addition to her academic pursuits in international trade law in general, and patent law and intellectual property rights protection in particular, she acquired extensive international experience by working with a global bank in China, an inter-governmental organisation in Singapore, a non-governmental organisation in Malaysia and a global-leading public affairs agency in Belgium. She also served as consultant for the European Union for the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), the multilateral political dialogue process between the Asian and the European regions. Dr Hu holds degrees from Chinese, British and Belgian universities.

1. Introduction 2. The process of international patent rights harmonisation 3. Assessing the progress of international patent rights harmonisation 4. The judicial system in China 5. Intellectual property rights protection in China: legislation and enforcement 6. The evolution of patent legislation in China 7. Patent policy and legislation: Japan v. China 8. Patent policy and legislation: India v. China 9. International patent rights harmonisation – the case of China 10. Conclusion