China denies Japanese rail patent infringement claims

The Chinese Ministry of Railways has rejected claims by Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries that China’s high-speed train patent filings violate contracts signed between Japan and China related to railway development, state media reported. Tadaharu Ohashi, chairman of Kawasaki Heavy, said last week that his company would take legal action if Chinese patents filed under the international patent cooperation treaty violate intellectual property clauses in joint venture agreements. The applications concern train assemblies, hulls and suspensions system components. Kawasaki Heavy transferred the technology for a 200 kilometer-per-hour train to China in 2004 to produce a high-speed train called the CRH2 in cooperation with China’s CSR Corp. CSR said that it developed an improved version of the train that can run at 300-350km/h that uses independently developed technology. “China will not claim anything that does not belong to it. However, it will not give up the right to patent its innovations because of irresponsible remarks by others,” said Li Jun, directory of general affairs at the ministry’s transport bureau.