[International IP Briefing] Dec. 2020

 

US

On November 18, 2020, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) issued a statement that The Walt Disney Company has to pay royalties to Alan Dean Foster, author of Star Wars series novels.

sfwa.org

Disney acquired the rights to novels based on original films such as Star Wars and Alien by acquiring Lucas Film in 2012 and 20th Century Fox in 2019, but the author of these novels, Alan Dean Foster, himself Claiming that they were not paying royalties to them.

SFWA required Disney to pay all royalties in order to resolve problems such as contracts related to Alan Dean Foster.

SFWA requests Disney to pay Fosters not only for current royalties but also for future royalties, to stop publishing and pay all royalties owed to Fosters until a new contract is signed, or to stop publishing in the future and pay the author for all royalties so far.

On the other hand, Disney has acquired the rights to novels such as Star Wars, but has not taken over the obligations of the contract, and has the right to publish the Foster’s novel, but has not accepted the contract, so they don’t have an obligation to pay royalty to the author.

If Disney's arguments are recognized as correct, SFWA may be a precedent for fundamentally changing the method of operating copyrights and contracts in the United States, and in that case, it is possible to sell the rights of subsidiaries in order to terminate the contract. SFWA is concerned that this possibility is very high.

Source

https://www.kiip.re.kr/board/trend/view.do?bd_gb=trend&bd_cd=1&bd_item=0&po_item_gb=&po_no=20062

CN

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology releases '2020 AI Patent Technology Analysis Report'

On November 12, 2020, the China National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center and the Electronic Intellectual Property Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the '2020 AI China Patent Technology Analysis Report (2020人工智能中国专利技术分析报告).

pixabay.com

The number of patent applications for artificial intelligence technology in China is steadily increasing under the Chinese government's policy support for artificial intelligence development.

Applicant : Internet-related companies such as Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba, and higher education institutions such as Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University are leading the development of artificial intelligence technology.

 -Baidu has filed 9,365 artificial intelligence-related patents and registered 2,682 cases by October 2020.

  -Samsung is the only foreign applicant in the top 10 for patent applications and registrations related to artificial intelligence.

Technology : Cloud computing-related patent applications, which are the basic fields of artificial intelligence development, account for the largest 18.38%, followed by computer vision (17.72%) and deep learning (14.52%).

In addition, as of October 2020, 3,036 applications for artificial intelligence technology related to COVID-19-related epidemic prevention activities have appeared.

Patents have been applied for artificial intelligence technology for medical services such as disease tracking, technology for monitoring human movement, and intelligent medical examination systems, and robots.

Meanwhile, the report evaluates that the spread and operation of artificial intelligence technology is accelerating through the open source platform related to artificial intelligence in China.

These platforms have adopted a relatively friendly open source license agreement and have taken an open stance and are carrying out cooperative activities through technology exchange in the global market.

Source

https://www.kiip.re.kr/board/trend/view.do?bd_gb=trend&bd_cd=1&bd_item=0&po_item_gb=&currentPage=2&po_no=20049