Google’s latest revolutionary invention, Google Glass, is set to hit the market starting this week.  The part-smartphone, part-mini-computer device looks like a pair of sunglasses, with a small glass box in the upper right-hand corner that will display information to a user without obstructing his line of vision.  Google Glass’s wearable technology and patented design displays information in a hands-free manner and users interacts with the product through voice commands, similar to the interaction users have with Siri, Apple’s leading lady on the innovative voice command front.  Some features that the product enables users to do are instantly document their day-to-day life, receive step by step real-time directions, track people they interact with using information and stats, conduct Google searches, take and share pictures, film videos, and translate on the go.  Although the product is incredibly new, Google has confirmed that after the initial test runs are through and the product enters the mass market, they will eventually work with sunglass retailers as well as retailers for prescription frames and lenses in order to afford everyone a uniquely tailored Google Glass experience.

In order to get their product out there, into the hands of Americans other than Google’s own employees who have been testing the product for a long while now, Google launched a campaign for their technology-loving followers.  Google’s #IfIHadGlass contest instructed U.S. residents to submit 50-word applications using either Twitter or Google Plus, explaining how they planned to use the new Google Glass technology.  At the end of the contest, Google awarded 8,000 lucky winners with their very own Google Glasses for only $1,500, and the opportunity to test drive some of the most incredible technology we have ever seen months before the product is publicly available.

To any person, technology buff or otherwise, this sounds absolutely amazing.  But it also sounds incredibly frightening.  Privacy debates have already arisen over the really-cool-but-kind-of-controversial product, and there are certainly more on the way.

Since the advent of the smart phone and instant media sharing, our privacy rights have certainly been minimized.  The ability for anybody to snap a photo in any public place has become an issue of growing concern for many, including professionals, celebrities, political figures, and otherwise.  But there are several additional dangerous components of Google Glass that seem to put our privacy interests at even greater risk.

First, there is the issue of simply being in someone’s frame of vision in order to be photographed or video recorded that places any passerby at the risk of having no idea whether or not they are on camera.  The lack of notice seems to be a disturbing privacy concern for legal analysts who have already been tuned into the Google Glass revolution for months.  Google has defended this concern by confirming that the purpose of the test market is to work out any potentially dangerous concerns, such as this one, before the product enters the mass market.  But it seems like this feature is fundamental to the ease and hands free nature of the device, almost ensuring that this problem will persist.  By this same token, a user may not even realize what kind of information they are capturing or recording, leading to the opportunity for copyright infringement, exposure of trade secret, and many other intellectual property related violations of privacy afforded by these protections.

Following ICANN’s 46^th meeting in Beijing, the President of ICANN told the Wall Street Journal that the private, U.S.-based Internet administrator will roll out Chinese character options for top-level domains (TLDs) later this year. In addition to allowing companies to apply for their own TLDs (think www.shop.nike without that pesky .com getting in the way), ICANN is working to introduce new address endings in additional languages, such as Arabic, Russian, and Japanese.

In 2011, the European Council authorized enhanced cooperation between member states in a view of creating a single European Patent. Spain and Italy refused to participate and requested the Court of Justice to annul the Council’s decision. The ECJ has dismissed their request noting, that the EU is authorized to create European-wide intellectual property rights and that the Council is fully competent to authorize enhanced cooperation in the area of patent law.

Mark Cohen, a Visiting Professor at Fordham University School of Law, publishes ChinaIPR.com, a highly informative blog that, in Cohen’s words, “aims to provide access to information, news and events related to IP development in China.”  As his blog readily displays, Cohen is one of the West’s leading experts on all things China IP-related.  He has amassed an impressive set of experiences over the past quarter century, including stints as an Attorney-Advisor at the Office of International Relations at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Senior Intellectual Property Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Of Counsel to Jones Day’s Beijing Office, and, most recently, Director of International Intellectual Property Policy at Microsoft.  He also speaks and reads Mandarin Chinese fluently.

While most Westerners are aware of the significant role that China now plays in the global economy, fewer are aware of the implications that China’s economic rise has for the holders of intellectual property rights.  Cohen’s blog narrows that knowledge gap.  With frequent updates, ChinaIPR.com features posts on a wide range of matters, including, among other things, legislative trends, rates of enforcement, application rates for IP rights, and analysis of long-term trends.  Many of these issues are often covered primarily by Chinese sources, so Cohen’s blog serves as an invaluable steppingstone for non-Chinese-speaking audiences who are curious about IP developments in China.

Cohen has a fondness for empirical data at the expense of anecdotal evidence.  In that vein, one of Cohen’s recent posts explores data on how foreigners seek information about Chinese IP.  According to Cohen’s analysis, Chinese government sources, while a major source of IP-related information, are nevertheless infrequently consulted by Americans, regardless of whether the sources are in Chinese or English.  Focusing on the website of China’s State Intellectual Property Office, Cohen related that nearly 72% of that site’s total visits in 2012 were from China, while a relatively paltry 11.2% of visitors were from Europe.  Visitors from the United States, however, comprised a scant .95% of SIPO’s hits last year.

Delving further, Cohen found that most of SIPO’s website’s hits in 2012 from Europe and the United States were, surprisingly, for Chinese-language pages.  In fact, roughly 80% of visitors to SIPO’s English language pages were China-based, while only 8.87% of such visitors were in the United States.

Which topics were visitors to SIPO’s English-language pages perusing?  According to Cohen, the overwhelming majority of such visitors – roughly 90% – sought information about how to file a patent application in China, a process that Cohen described as an information-intensive effort.  The next largest proportion of visitors – nearly 6% – sought information about law and policy, while smaller proportions of visitors landed on SIPO’s FAQ, News, Patent Examination, and “About SIPO” pages.

With characteristic rigor, Cohen also compared the above data to data on visitors to the EU China IPR Help Desk, a leading Western online source of information about China’s IP system.  While far fewer people in total visited the IPR Help Desk’s website than visited SIPO’s website, Cohen noted that the number of page views on SIPO’s English-language law and policy page was comparable to the number of overall visitors to the IPR Help Desk’s website, which provides similar law and policy-related information.  From this finding, Cohen concluded that “the IPR Help Desk is performing an important function in providing Western language information on China’s IP system to Europeans,” and that “English language websites serve an important function in disseminating information on developments in China.”