On September 16, 2008, PRC Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) jointly released the revised Catalogue of Export Prohibited and Restricted Technologies (Catalogue). In accordance with the Announcement No.12, 2008 of MOFCOM and MOST, the Catalogue shall come into force as of November 1, 2008.

For export purposes, technologies fall into three categories --- non-restricted, restricted and prohibited as stipulated in:

The “Non-disclosed Information” referred in TRIPS equals to the “Confidential Information” or “Business Secrets” within China. In my view, there are some connections and differences between confidential information and business secrets (as one part) and Non-disclosure Obligations (as another part), i.e. the different legal consequences may resulted from the breach of Non-disclosure Obligations under any contract and the infringement of business secrets, in particular, the civil, administrative or criminal liabilities may arising from the infringement of business secrets, provided, however, the breach of Non-disclosure Obligations (except the confidentiality of business secrets) under any contract may
only subject to the civil liabilities.

In the morning of June 20th, 2008, the delegation of AIPLA (American Intellectual Property Law Association) visited Shanghai Bar Association and Intellectual Property Law Committee, representatives has attended the forum in Shanghai Bar Association. During the session, deputies of China and US have introduced their own associations and committees, as well as back ground information of members who attended the meeting.

Westlaw is generally recognized as the best legal online database provider in law indutry, and it is almost the necessary on-line legal research tool to U.S. legal practitioners and law students. My knowledge of Westlaw originated from “Black’s Law Dictionary”. At that time, I heard that it is the Bible of a lawyer. Therefore, I bought one of version 7 against many setbacks. And several years ago, I bought the latest version 8. In last year, I bought a Black’s Law Dictionary® Digital. I guess I can be regarded as great supporters of Westlaw.

With the development of China’s economy, more and more foreign investment enters into the domestic market. Foreign investors may be looking forward to sharing the achievements of the development of China’s economy, or they may have already had business in China. However, things won’t remain propitious forever. Foreign investors have to deal with lawsuits in China. They are generally in a disadvantaged position for that they are not quite clear about Chinese laws.

On 9 May, 2008, a symposium on “the Constitutive Requirements of the Offense of Infringement of Business Secrets and Its Judicial Definition” was held by the Institute of the Law Firm of East China University of Political Science and Law. The experts in Criminal Law, Procedure Law, Civil Law, Administrative Law and Intellectual Property Law share their personal opinions about the topic. My former studies on the business secrets are basically based on the studies of Anti Unfair Competition Law.

Well, have not wriiten any blog for long. First of all, in my own name would like to thank all of my friends who cared and supported the CBL project. My special gratitudes to the core members of CBL team who have done great contribution to the correcting of website in year 2007.

Thanks to the work, that I made friends with a lot of software engineers who made me acquainted with more industry application software, open source software and database application etc. With their full backup, I built my own website in Chinese five years ago. Now http://www.5izy.cn has been widely applauded by industry itself and has established links with several domestic top legal website.