Intellectual property, business in China: taking a stand

Over the last 40 years, China has developed laws for the protection of intellectual property rights. Unfortunately, these laws have not been uniformly enforced, making such protection problematic for Australian and other foreign organisations wishing to do business in China. This article first scrutinises the current Chinese laws covering intellectual property protection. It then examines the outcomes of a qualitative study that addressed intellectual property protection issues faced by selected Australian organisations conducting business with Chinese counterparts located in China. Forty Australian business managers/owners from Australian companies having business relationships with Chinese firms were interviewed for this study. The findings show that protection issues are only relevant to certain types of businesses that have intellectual property to protect. Nevertheless, a number of the managers/owners interviewed believed that infringement threats were real and inevitable in China, and some had even experienced cases of copying. The study found that, despite such concerns, there was little evidence of organisations taking proactive and positive steps to adequately protect their intellectual property. In order to address this, the authors of this article have developed a protection strategy that incorporates the use of the law, together with firms’ organisational designs, so that foreign firms can protect their rights when interacting with the Chinese market

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Offers the simplest possible explanation of Australia\u27s tax laws by using the unique tax pyramid method

Self-education expenses: some thoughts for taxpayers and their advisers

With the advent of another tax year, the nature and form of self-education expenses come to mind. The income tax return for individuals makes a perceived distinction between forms of education for tax purposes but it may not be that clear for taxpayers and their advisers. Item D4 of the individual tax return allows for taxpayers to make a claim for work related self education expenses that relate to formal qualifications from a school, college or university. The individual tax return implies that there is a distmction between formal self-education and informal self-education. However when one looks at the relevant Australian Tax Office (ATO) material, this distinction could easily be over-looked

Antifouling activity of bromotyrosine-derived sponge metabolites and synthetic analogues

Eighteen brominated sponge-derived metabolites and synthetic analogues were analyzed for antilarval settlement of Balanus improvisus. Only compounds exhibiting oxime substituents including bastadin-3 (4), -4 (1), -9 (2), and -16 (3), hemibastadin-1 (6), aplysamine-2 (5), and psammaplin A (10) turned out to inhibit larval settling at 1 to 10 microM. Analogues of hemibastadin-1 (6) were synthesized and tested for structure activity studies. Debromohemibastadin-1 (8) inhibited settling of B. improvisus, albeit at lower concentrations than hemibastadin-1 (6). Both 6 and 8 also induced cyprid mortality. 5,5'-dibromohemibastadin-1 (7) proved to be nontoxic, but settlement inhibition was observed at 10 microM. Tyrosinyltyramine (9), lacking the oxime function, was not antifouling active and was non-toxic at 100 microM. Hemibastadin-1 (6) and the synthetic products showed no general toxicity when tested against brine shrimp larvae. In contrast to the lipophilic psammaplin A (10), the hydrophilic sulfated psammaplin A derivative (11) showed no antifouling activity even though it contains an oxime group. We therefore hypothesize that the compound needs to cross membranes (probably by diffusion) and that the target for psammaplin A lies intracellularly