Star Group, the Hong Kong-registered joint venture of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, received formal permission on March 1 to broadcast its Xingkong Weishi Mandarin language channel in China, South China Morning Post said. The channel will be broadcast to hotels of three-star rating and above, to foreigners' compounds and other selected areas in China via a centralised satellite television distribution platform.
As part of a reciprocal deal, News Corp is now distributing CCTV's English international channel CCTV-9 to the British market via its BSkyB satellite network.
Toyota takes Geely to court Toyota Motors of Japan has filed a suit alleging copyright infringement against Chinese independent carmaker Geely Motors, the Financial Times said. Toyota declined to give details of the allegations, but Chinese media reports have said that they related to the use of the Toyota logo. A lawyer for Geely said that they also concerned the company's alleged unauthorised use in its cars of engines produced by Toyota's joint venture in Tianjin. Geely itself denied the allegations and said it would fight the case.
The newspaper commented that the case showed an increasing willingness among Japanese firms to assert their intellectual property rights in China. A recent survey of Japanese investors in China by the Japan External Trade Organisation (Jetro) found that about 40 per cent of firms operating there were considering filing claims against local companies for copyright and trademark violation. Of the 418 firms surveyed, onethird said they had been hurt by forged products, 72 per cent said they had had their trade rights infringed and 69 per cent claimed their designs had been stolen.
Even so, a Jetro official said that Japanese firms spend much less than their Western counterparts on taking counter-measures against forgeries. For example, only 6.7 per cent of the respondents have stationed copyright experts in their China operations.
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