Encorium Group (Wayne, Pennsylvania),formerly Covalent Group , reported its common stock has begun trading on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol ENCO. The change in the company’s name to Encorium Group was approved at its annual meeting of shareholders Oct. 20. Encorium is a global clinical research organization that designs clinical trials and patient disease registries for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries.

Piracy — a threat to device firms?

With its record of intellectual property abuse, China’s lure as a vast market is tempered by concerns that proprietary information may be used to engage in price wars or, worse, make copycats of Western technology.

Paul Berry of Boston Scientific , said, “we are very concerned about IP in China,” adding that the company has “seen evidence of violations of IP” in the medical device sphere.

Barry added that it may be safe to assume that some entities in China will use “any means necessary” to obtain medical technology for knock-off duplication.

Henry Levine of Stonebridge noted that this is “a significant issue across all sectors,” and that laws regarding IP piracy “are not well enforced.” The rule of law, he said, is still “secondary to informal relationships,” doubling the difficulty of monitoring IP piracy.

Lipson of Chindex , cited “an increase in nationalism and protectionism that I haven’t seen in recent years” in China, thus muddying the IP environment.

Lipson told Medical Device Daily that China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade has a catalogue of industries that it wants to encourage in China and a list that it wants to discourage. Healthcare is on the “discouraged” list, suggesting, she said, “no hope” of pulling value-added taxes and duties from capital equipment expenditures for hospitals.

John Huenemann, the principal of the international department at DC-based Miller & Chevalier, told MDD that the information sought by the Shanghai Price Bureau could be a bellwether for a national movement in that direction, and that such information poses substantial risks for firms seeking to do business in China.

“China has obligations under the WTO,” it must meet. But, he said, “we can’t always prove collusion.”

Huenemann said that a sister law firm to Miller & Chevalier keeps tabs on such things, but that it’s a large task because of “so many different actors [at the national, state and local level] and the regulatory roles are in flux.”

— Mark McCarty