Report: China opening intellectual property courts

Bloomberg reports that China will open up new intellectual property courts to handle cases of IP violations. The first court, in Beijing, will open within two weeks. By the end of the year Shanghai and Guangzhou will also get courts designed to handle IP cases, including patent and trademark law, the report says. China is a notorious infringer, and games are often pirated and re-uploaded to the country's numerous Android app stores. Chinese companies also register, and effectively steal, popular trademarks, Gamasutra blogger Pascal Clarysse writes: "I know of a video game publisher that recently launched a global hit on the App Store. They did register their trademarks and copyrights in the Computer Games category in China ahead of time so they thought they were safe. One day, they wanted to produce some promo t-shirts with a local partner. ... When the publisher tried to extend their trademark into the 'Apparel' category, they discovered that it was already registered by someone else." Whether game developers will have the resources or expertise to file claims in the courts is another question. It's a notoriously tough country for foreign companies to operate in.