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In March of 2021, Chinas most important annual political meetings took place as thousands of delegates to the National Peoples Congress (NPC), the national legislature, and the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the top political advisory body, convened for a week at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Commonly known as thelianghui or Two Sessions this years elite gatherings in Beijing were particularly significant. The Chinese leadership not only set the national socio-economic and political priorities for 2021, but also approved Chinas 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP) (2021-2025), the grand strategic blueprint for the next half decade, as well as longer-term goals for 2035. Whats more, 2021 marks the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with the 100th anniversary officially commemorated in July.

For the business world, the lianghui provided a critical bellwether for taking stock of how Beijing intends to steer the Chinese economy in the year ahead, through 2025, and beyond. Major themes included:

This article will focus on how the lianghui will impact intellectual property (IP).

As China aims to become a leading innovative country by 2035, the work report laid out an ambitious national technological blueprint for the next five years, emphasizing that innovation remains at the heart of Chinas modernization drive. The government vowed to focus on achieving major breakthroughs in core technologies, including next-generation artificial intelligence, semiconductors, cloud computing, and other key areas, as well as establish more national laboratories and innovation centers. Beijing will also aim to get 56% of the country on 5G networks. By 2025, the government aims to have the digital economy account for about 10% of Chinas newly added economic output.

Eight projects were identified as impacting the digital economy, namely cloud computing, big data, Internet of things, industrial networks, block chain, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality according to the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA).

From 2021-2025, research and development (R&D) spending will be ramped up by more than 7% every year, with expenditures expected to account for a higher percentage of GDP than that during the 13th FYP period. This year, China will increase its spending on basic research by 10.6%. The work report also said that the government will continue the policy of granting an extra tax deduction of 75% on enterprises R&D costs and raise this to 100% for manufacturing enterprises.

As can be seen, this continues a strong trend in increasing R&D funding that started in 1995 and indicates a commitment to R&D as well as providing tax incentives for R&D projects being in China.

In particular, the 14th FYP featured a renewed focus on accelerating the Fourth Industrial Revolution and transforming China into an advanced manufacturing superpower, outlining plans to strengthen Chinas global competitiveness in areas such as robotics, new energy vehicles, aircraft development, and agricultural machinery, among others. Speaking on the sidelines of the Two Sessions, Xiao Yaqing, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, said, The manufacturing industry is the lifeblood of the countrys economy, and the real economy should be further strengthened and improved.

Miao Wei, a government advisor and member of the CPPCC, predicted that it will take at least three decades to achieve Chinas goal of becoming a manufacturing powerhouse, saying that China is still a third-tier manufacturing power and citing Germany and the U.S. as examples of first-tier manufacturing nations. Chinas manufacturing output as a share of its economy has declined in recent years, slipping to just over a quarter of GDP in 2020, and Miao warned that this has been occurring too early and too quickly.

The significant commitments for elevated R&D spending and plans for a reinvigorated manufacturing drive underscored Beijings determination to continue expanding the role of innovation as a major growth engine for the Chinese economy. Coming amid growing rivalries with the United States and other major economies around technology, the goals also reflected a rising urgency to reduce Chinas technological dependency on external markets and mitigate the vulnerabilities of its supply chains to geopolitical tensions. Going forward, this will be a top official priority under DCS. This reliance on external markets has caused issues with R&D in China.

For the first time in a work report, the government also pledged to expand efforts against business monopolies as part of efforts to ensure fair market competition. Coming after the recent launch of an anti-trust crackdown targeting domestic tech giants, the announcement signaled that the tougher approach to governing Chinas booming technology sectors can be expected to intensify further. Companies should be prepared for the likelihood that authorities will take a more active and interventionist role in the Chinese private sector. Similar trends are developing in the United States. See our recent article on "Promoting Competition in the American Economy Executive Order: Antitrust Is Back?"

Intellectual property (IP) owners are advised to have a working knowledge of the recent draft published in April of this year to see what is planned for the coming years. Knowledge of the FYP will help to set the check points for ones own IP strategy and plans.

Intellectual property has taken a key role in the development of technological progress in Chinas big economy. Chinas IP system is gradually changing, with each plan having various focus points. In the FYP, two major focus points are evident:

These two focus areas are further detailed below.

The enforcement system of the patent law has been strengthened with the recent fourth amendment. This includes valuable rights for the pharmaceutical sector. The implementation of the FYP will further emphasize the use of the newly-created, punitive compensation system for infringement of patents and will increase the damage compensation. Exposure to multiples of up to five times the otherwise calculated damages are likely to become a more common. In addition, the criminal enforcement of IP rights has been proposed.

Improvements to the judicial and administrative branches of the law enforcement system of intellectual property rights were announced, together with work on the effectiveness of the arbitration and mediation system. Notarization requirements were also mentioned as being within the scope of the reform.

It can be expected that the next five years will bring a more detailed and standardized IP protection regime of the administrative departments and the judiciary. Besides the abovementioned tools to act against infringers, it will be crucial to check in detail what else will be designed to improve IP enforcement. The details may determine the balance between plaintiff and accused infringers in the infringement proceedings and hopefully will provide a less complex and more predictable proceedings according to accepted guidelines.

Handling of overseas IP disputes will be guided with support from the Chinese government, through new platforms such as the National Guidance Center for Handling Overseas Intellectual Property Disputes with ten local sub-centers. There is also an intention to provide intensive training.

This demonstrates that knowledge on the IP system will be crucial for IP creation and enforcement strategies for IP owners entering the Chinese system as well as for Chinese looking abroad.

The FYP has a clear focus on high-technology fields, of which the following are specifically mentioned: quantum information, photonics and micro-nanoelectronics, network communications, artificial intelligence, biomedicine and modern energy systems. While there is a focus on becoming a leader, or at least becoming fully self-reliant in these technology sectors, the IP related to these technologies will likely see the most benefits in the future investment via national laboratories. In addition, it can be assumed that patentability exclusions and patentability hurdles (e.g. for business methods or software per se) will be further softened or lowered to allow the drafting of claims that cover these fields.

All applicants in the high-tech sector will benefit from these improvements. Therefore, patent applications that face examination challenges may become acceptable in the next five years. It could be worthwhile to pursue inventions in those areas. It will be important to watch for practice changes to see which claim formats are supported by the CNIPA patent office. According to a media interview with Shen Changyu, CNIPA Director, there is currently ongoing research on how to deal with the question of whether works and inventions completed by AI can generate new IP rights. Interesting questions may be posed and answered.

While these high-tech fields will be supported, there is another important initiative that focuses on the quality of IP. This initiative is implemented through the promotion of ownership of high-value invention patents per 10,000 population in the FYP, which replaces the old targets of ownership of invention patents per 10,000 population in previous plans. It is worth noting that the number of high-value invention patents owned by per 10,000 people reach 12 this year and was a record. As part of the quality initiative, we have seen the drafting of a completely new legislation to prevent irregular patent applications, including revisions of the Measures on Regulating Patent Application Behaviors.

The recent discussion has raised concerns on whether the new measures could also be overreaching and may negatively affect IP strategies which have been commonly used to pursue legitimate goals of the innovator (e.g., filing multiple divisional applications to obtain the optimal protection for all the best inventive features). This should be carefully watched to not stumble into the scope of these regulations that should according to its original purpose prevent misuse of the IP system.

Opinions and conclusions in this post are solely those of the author unless otherwise indicated. The information contained in this blog is general in nature and is not offered and cannot be considered as legal advice for any particular situation. The author has provided the links referenced above for information purposes only and by doing so, does not adopt or incorporate the contents. Any federal tax advice provided in this communication is not intended or written by the author to be used, and cannot be used by the recipient, for the purpose of avoiding penalties which may be imposed on the recipient by the IRS. Please contact the author if you would like to receive written advice in a format which complies with IRS rules and may be relied upon to avoid penalties.

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Chinas 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) and Its Impact on Your Intellectual Property Portfolio - JD Supra

A federal judge sentenced a former Starr County gangster to 10 years in prison Monday.

U.S. District Judge John D. Rainey sentenced Hector Pelon Guerra, 41, of La Rosita a former ranking member of the Texas Chicano Brotherhood in Starr County during a hearing Monday afternoon in Victoria.

Guerra pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 2,200 pounds of marijuana. As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors dropped a gun charge against him and recommended 10 years in prison.

I do accept my responsibility, your honor, Guerra said.

The case brought together Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the Criminal Investigations Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

They identified more than 70 people affiliated with the Texas Chicano Brotherhood.

The McAllen investigation revealed that Ricardo GARCIA, Rafael DIAZ, and Hector GUERRA were ranking members within the Starr County faction of the TxCB organization, according to a summary of the case against Guerra filed by federal prosecutors. These ranking members thus became targets of an electronic surveillance (wiretap) investigation.

The Gulf Cartel paid members of the Texas Chicano Brotherhood to transport marijuana throughout the Rio Grande Valley, according to federal court records. The gang also robbed stash houses and sold the stolen marijuana to other smugglers.

Guerra and other members of the gang moved about 330 pounds of marijuana a week, according to information provided to the government by an informant. The gang also participated in kidnappings and murders.

After a grand jury indicted Guerra, agents tracked him to a trailer home in La Rosita. A regional SWAT team from San Juan ripped off the door with a battering ram, set off two stun grenades and arrested him on Nov. 21, 2018.

And that is how the SWAT team in San Juan knocks on the door, said Bill Weir, the host of a short-lived television show called Border Live, which filmed the arrest. Weir said agents had both a federal arrest warrant and a search warrant.

The search warrant had been written by Arturo David Ibarra Jr., an investigator with the Starr County District Attorneys Office.

Ibarra told a judge that investigators believed Guerra was an enforcer in the Texas Chicano Brotherhood.

In early 2018 the suspected party was arrested for the possession of marihuana. During the scope of that investigation intelligence revealed that the suspected party was smuggling narcotics, specifically marihuana, in large quantities and has direct contact to the Gulf Cartel, read the affidavit, according to federal court records. It is my belief that the suspected party has evidence in his possession which can be beneficial to the investigation into the Texas Chicano Brotherhood gang.

Ibarra requested a no-knock warrant based on information provided by an informant.

During the investigation Investigator Ibarra learned that the suspected party attended a Texas Chicano Brotherhood meeting on November 18, 2018 and the suspected party was in the possession of a AK-47 and a handgun, read the affidavit, according to federal court records.

When agents searched the trailer, they didnt find an AK-47. They did, however, find a pistol hidden in an air-conditioning vent.

Attorney Micah Wayne Hatley of Victoria, who represented Guerra, challenged the search warrant.

Information about a months-old marijuana bust simply wasnt enough to justify a search, Hatley argued in a motion to suppress. The warrant also failed to include any information that linked the marijuana bust to Guerras house.

Statements that Guerra made after his arrest should be suppressed too, Hatley argued, because a federal agent questioned Guerra after he invoked his right to remain silent.

Rainey, the federal judge, agreed.

Hector Guerra, 41, of La Rosita was a ranking member of the Texas Chicano Brotherhood. (Photo courtesy of the Starr County Sheriffs Office.)

The Court finds that the search warrant was not supported by probable cause and that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule does not apply, Rainey wrote in an opinion filed in February. The search of Defendants home after the initial protective sweep incident to his arrest therefore violated his Fourth Amendment rights.

Rainey also suppressed all statements Guerra made to agents.

There is no question Defendant explicitly invoked his right to remain silent. Under Miranda and its progeny, the agents should have immediately terminated the interrogation at that point, Rainey wrote. Instead of ensuring that Defendants right to remain silent was scrupulously honored, they continued, in the Governments own words, trying to encourage him to cooperate with the government.

The Texas Chicano Brotherhood green-lighted Guerra after his arrest, according to a transcript of a court hearing in August 2020. Concerned about his safety, the U.S. Marshals Service kept Guerra in solitary confinement and transferred him at least three times.

Guerra agreed to plead guilty in May.

We made the deal for 120 months, your honor, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Hubert Booth, who prosecuted the case.

Guerra said he wanted to take classes in prison and become a different person.

The first few times you came into this court, that wasnt your attitude, Rainey said.

Guerra agreed.

I know, Guerra said. And I apologize.

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Texas Chicano Brotherhood 'enforcer' sentenced to 10 years in prison - Progresstimes

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Sadly, we are approaching a time in America when our elected public officials will assault the liberties we have hired them to protect. Whatever the cause, the government will soon blame its failures to contain a virus on a small portion of the population and then impose restrictions on the inalienable rights of all of us.

We cannot permit this to happen again.

During the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln thought it expedient to silence those in the northern states who challenged his wartime decisions by incarcerating them in military prisons, he was rebuked afterward by a unanimous Supreme Court. The essence of the rebuke was that no matter the state of difficulties whether war or pestilence the Constitution protects our natural rights, and its provisions are to be upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, in good times and in bad.

Whether COVID-19 is coming back or not, our central planners have panicked. We do not have a free market in the U.S. in the delivery of health care; rather, we have thousands of pages of statutes, regulations, and controls at the federal, state, and local levels.

Those controls were revealed as manifestly deficient the last time around. The feds were so protective of their control of health care an area of governance that the Supreme Court has ruled is nowhere delegated to them in the Constitution and, but for their power to tax those who defy them, is nonexistent that they insisted that only the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta could be trusted to test for the virus.

It took weeks of begging by governors and mayors, and health care professionals for the feds to relent. Of course, once they acknowledged that labs throughout the country were as competent as theirs, they realized that their incompetence had deprived all physicians as well as most private sector and state government-owned labs of the test kits themselves.

We all know how central economic planning diminishes freedom, produces scarcity, and adds to the cost of products. Now we know that central micromanagement of health care kills people.

But these mayors and governors were not to be outdone by the feds in their totalitarian impulses. Many of them issued decrees that are as profoundly unconstitutional as Lincolns efforts to silence dissent.

They ordered the closing of most businesses and nearly all retail establishments. They acted as if they, and not we, owned our faces. They shuttered religious institutions. It took a year for the courts to interfere partially with this madness.

The fulfillment of these totalitarian impulses put millions out of work, closed and destroyed thousands of businesses, and impaired the fundamental rights of tens of millions all in violation of numerous sections of the Constitution that the totalitarians swore to uphold.

And now they are threatening to do this again.

The Contracts Clause of the Constitution prohibits the states from interfering with lawful contracts, such as leases and employment agreements. The Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment prohibits the states from interfering with life, liberty, or property without a trial at which the state must prove fault. The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment requires just compensation when the state meaningfully interferes with an owners chosen lawful use of his property.

Taken together, these clauses reveal significant protections of private property in the Constitution. Add to this the threat of punishment that accompanied these decrees and the fact that they were executive decrees, not legislation, and one can see the paramount rejection of basic democratic and constitutional principles in the minds and words and deeds of those who have perpetrated them.

Add to all this the protection in the First Amendment of the rights to worship and associate, and elsewhere the judicially recognized right to travel, and it is clear that these nanny state rules were profoundly unconstitutional, indisputably unlawful, and utterly unworthy of respect or compliance.

Why is this happening again?

Throughout history, free people have been willing to accept the devils bargain of trading liberty for safety when they are fearful. We supinely accept the shallow and hollow offers of government that somehow less liberty equals more safety. It doesnt. This is the governments dream dominance without resistance.

This happened here with the Alien and Sedition Acts in the 1790s when the Federalists feared a second revolution and punished speech critical of them, during the Civil War when Lincoln feared dissent and Congress feared defeat. They locked up innocents during World War I when President Woodrow Wilson punished the speech he hated and feared, and during the Great Depression when President Franklin D. Roosevelt feared economic calamity and seized property without compensation. And, after 9/11, fearing another attack, Congress secretly crafted the Patriot Acts circumvention of the Fourth Amendment and authorized the creation of the total surveillance state.

Of course, just one year ago, we free people were all in lockdown a word used to describe confining prisoners to their cells.

This sordid history came about when the public was fearful of the unknown and trustful of the governments bargain. But the liberty that was sacrificed for the safety that was promised is being taken away again.

Liberty is natural and personal. You can sacrifice yours, but you cannot sacrifice mine. Thus, personal liberty the Declaration of Independence calls our rights inalienable, and the Ninth Amendment reflects freedoms nature as limitless is insulated from totalitarian and even majoritarian interference.

Today, the fear of contagion again gives government cover for its assaults on freedom and poses a question the government does not want to answer: If liberty can be taken away in times of crisis, is it really liberty; or is it just a license, via a temporary government permission slip, subject to the whims of the politicians in power?

We cannot permit this to happen again.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is an analyst for the Fox News Channel. He has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution.

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Freedom in the time of COVID-19 madness - Washington Times

In 1992, 11-year-old Guy Fraser spent his summer vacation fiddling with a radio. He was searching, sometimes in vain, for an English-language broadcast of the Olympics in Barcelona. He was trapped in France. Oblivious to the Olympics and her sons devotion to them Frasers mother had booked a two-week break that coincided almost perfectly with the Games. Fraser was heartbroken, but he made the best of it. He found French broadcasts he could mostly understand as he sussed out how his favourite athletes were faring in Spain.

Nearly three decades later, the Englishman is just as enthusiastic about the Games, especially after more than a year of Covid-19 lockdowns. So in the leadup to Tokyo, he began to do some research. Fraser is an equalopportunity viewer Once you properly understand the rules and tactics, any sport is inherently fascinating, he told the Guardian in an email and he wanted to be as informed as he could be. So he scrolled his phone from his home in Bath perusing rosters, trying to learn a thing or two about the people whod earned spots on teams across the world.

And sometimes, he failed. Sometimes he couldnt find any information at all.

I was surprised by the amount of people listed as competing who didnt have [a Wikipedia page] started yet, Fraser said. I assume the lack of competitions worldwide leading up to the Games meant that a few of the usual markers werent hit. He added: These are fabulous, fantastic athletes at their peak of capabilities and at the peak of human physical achievements, and they deserve recognition and representation.

Before this year, Fraser had dabbled in the wide world of Wikipedia. He believes wholeheartedly in the free online encyclopedia and its force as a social good, and from time to time hed edited or added a page. Now, though, he felt Wikipedia was seriously lacking and he had plenty of time on his hands. Fraser works with children who have autism, and the pandemic had disrupted his professional life and kept him confined to home. He was itching for something to do, and he found it in an internet blind spot. He was going to make sure every single Olympian got a Wikipedia page.

This summer, Fraser pored over pages of results everything from the decathlon to race walking to shot put. He translated text from foreign languages, read interviews, checked and double-checked his work. He doesnt like to code, so every time he finished a page, he flagged it for Wikipedia to finish the job. Since 1 June, he has created 358 pages. In that time, he has also made more than 1,300 edits.

He wrote about Ebba Tulu Chala, a Swedish marathoner who was born in Ethiopia and left as a child refugee, and Elija Godwin, a US runner who was impaled by a javelin in 2019. Then theres Alice Mason, a distance runner and doctor from New Zealand who paused her Olympic training during the pandemic to work at an urgent care centre, and Andrew Coscoran, an Irish middle-distance runner who was suspended from the Florida State college team for breaking curfew. Fraser doesnt discriminate between good deeds and bad. His goal is pure information, and the facts he knows about his athletes could fill a novella. Over the course of his research, he learned about photography and the Atlanta Falcons, Freibergs disease, the Republic of Kiribati, knee injuries, immigration and the optic nerve. If you have to trawl through a few Belarusian hammer throwers to find the great stories, Fraser said, so be it.

As he gathered information and parsed it into readable narratives, Fraser found himself pulling for people he researched. The more he knew about where theyd come from and what obstacles theyd faced, the more certain he became about their chances to win it all. Hes still waiting for one of his athletes to take gold.

When Fraser told his friends what he was working on, several were amused. His girlfriend is puzzled by the exercise, which ate up hours of his summer, but that doesnt faze him. At least Im being quiet, he says. Its as harmless a hobby as you get.

More than 10 million people across the world have registered to create and edit Wikipedia pages since the site went online in 2001. Exactly 199 of them have created more than 20,000 pages; the busiest creator had made 895,445 pages as of Thursday, way north of Frasers total. Still, he ranks in the top 1% of creators and hes done the bulk of his work this summer.

A week into the Games, Fraser is still plugging away with his pages on the English language version of the site. He has more to do hes not certain how many, exactly, but he wont rest until the 11,656 athletes are all enshrined in the online encyclopedia (he is helped by the fact that the vast majority of them already had pages). On Thursday, he watched BMX and learned that one of the Latvian competitors has also competed in bobsled events. On Friday, he turned his attention to track and field, working his way down the roster of entrants in the 100m dash. And hes not just creating pages; hes also making sure every runner who logs a personal best time gets an edit to document it. In the process, he discovered that Maggie Barrie, a sprinter from Sierra Leone, had been entered in the wrong race because of an administrative error. It was yet another story to file away, a page edit, on his way toward what, exactly? Recognition? Page views? The honour of creating a page for an underdog-turned-medallist?

Sign up for our Tokyo 2020 briefing with all the news, views and previews for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

But Fraser isnt concerned with any of that; he says he set out on this quest without a goal. There was no endpoint, because the concept of an ending is totally at odds with Wikipedia.

Theyre never finished, he says of his pages. You cant ever say all the information has been found. People will continue to build and improve and tweak and add. Its a great community; when you make a mistake, before you awake the next day someone youll never meet anonymously on the other side of the world fixes it. Its incredibly lifeaffirming and provides a bit of faith in humanity.

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There are 11,656 athletes at the Olympics. Guy Fraser wanted them all on Wikipedia - The Guardian

Heppenheim/Hamburg (DPA) Spectators and stargazers can expect fireworks: the stars falling by the hundreds on the Perseids Islands can be seen in the night sky in the first half of August.

And the conditions for the scene are good as long as the weather lasts all this summer, which so far has been fairly mixed. The conditions are particularly favorable this year, because the moon sets late in the evening, says the Association of Friends of the Stars in Germany. This means that its light will not illuminate the night sky and will not disturb the view of dying cosmic dust particles. Under optimal conditions, you could see a meteor rushing across the sky every minute or two.

According to Sternfreunde, the peak of the meteor stream is expected on the nights of August 12 and 13. If you then look east in a clear sky after midnight, you can see dozens of stars falling per hour. But even on the weekends before and after you can see the glowing particles.

The Perseids appear to come from the constellation of Perseus, but its the debris cloud from Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle that floods Earth every year in its orbit around the Sun. According to Astronomical Friends, the comet was independently discovered by Louis Swift and Horace Tuttle on July 19, 1862, and it takes about 133 years to complete one orbit around the Sun. The next time it should be visible from Earth is in the year 2126.

According to the Hamburg Planetarium, what burns up in Earths atmosphere are the crumbs of a comet that it loses in its orbit. Each August, Earth crosses this cosmic debris path, and comet particles fall into the atmosphere like raindrops on a car window. Then they burn up to 100 to 80 kilometers above the Earths surface. Some particles are bright enough to be seen even in the interfering light of large cities. However, the planetarium advises you to go to a dark place without disturbing the light and also to be patient. Falling stars will likely come in bursts, and the eyes will have to get used to the darkness of the night.

dpa-infocom, dpa: 210805-99-714652 / 2

Alcohol buff. Troublemaker. Introvert. Student. Social media lover. Web ninja. Bacon fan. Reader.

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Science - Fireworks of the cosmic parts - Perseids burning in the sky - Wikipedia - The Weston Forum