The first AUTM in Asia meeting was held at the Beijing International Hotel on April 14 and 15.
Our partners in the venture were the Beijing Municipal Commission of Science and Technology and Peking University. Also supporting the event were the Department of International Cooperation of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”), the Torch High-Tech Industry Development Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Agency for the Diffusion of the Technologies for Innovation, Italy.
The conference was a great success. Some 1,100 attendees were registered, 900 Chinese and 200 from outside China. While this sounds like a lot for a Regional Meeting – well over half the AUTM Annual Meeting’s 1,866 this year – one way to look at it is that this is what we should have expected. The population of China is four times that of the United States and this regional meeting attracted about four times the attendance of a U.S. regional meeting, which is typically 200-300 for Eastern and Central Regions.
Mr. Guo Zhongwen, Vice-Mayor of Beijing opened the event, followed by AUTM President Robin Rasor. Keynote speeches were made by Ms. Binying Wang, Deputy Director General of WIPO, Mr. Cai Wenqin, Deputy Director General of Torch H-i-Tech and Mr Zhu Shilong, Deputy Director of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Science and Technology.
On the second day, keynote speeches were made by Mr. Zhang Qin, Executive Secretary of the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology, Chief Justice Rader of the Federal Circuit. As the AUTM Immediate Past President, I also spoke.
Chief Justice Rader talked about the work the Court has done on damages over the past two years, culminating with the landmark Uniloc case which definitively, unequivocally struck down the use of the hallowed “25% Rule.” So successful has the Court’s work on issues such as the proper use of the whole market rule and what constitutes a comparable license that the provisions concerning damages reform were removed from S 23, the version of patent reform that passed in the Senate recently.
Eighteen agreements were signed at the very start of the conference, most notably a collaboration between Italy and China on technology commercialization.
A number of VIP panels brought together experts from the United States, China and a number of other countries to discuss various aspects of technology commercialization.
There were a number of partnering events at which U.S. universities presented technologies to Chinese companies. We will track how much substantive follow-up resulted from these initial contacts, and this will determine whether we repeat the experiment next year.
The first official AUTM course was offered, the Valuation Course, and attracted 60 or so attendees.
Our hosts were very gracious and there were a number of dinners, one of which involved toasts with a Chinese version of sake that was 52% alcohol that thankfully was drunk from very, very small glasses.
AUTM in Asia 2012 will be held in Singapore.