Dear Colleagues, dear Friends,

    That simple little phrase in Chinese defines like in a nutshell the friendly relations I have had for more than 30 years with my appreciated Colleague Professor Guo Shoukang whom we have so sadly lost now.

    I have met Professor Guo for the first time in the years eighty at the Munich Max Planck Institute (then still named Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Patent, Copyright and Competition law), located at that time in the rather noble quarter of Bogenhausen in Munich/Bavaria. On behalf of  his university the 人民大学(and of his Government , indeed) he was busy studying German and European Intellectual Property laws, traveling all over  Europe (to Geneva, to Brussels and other places) and  helping to prepare the series of IP laws which came into being, one after the other between 1982 and 1990.

    He was also very engaged in making speeches and writing articles about Chinese law already existing or being prepared. In that context it was a real pleasure for me to prepare, with his kind collaboration, the very first comprehensive text book on Chinese IP Law in German, which was published  under the title of “Die Neuregelung des gewerblichen Rechtsschutzes in China” (Munich 1988) and where Professor Guo, in  addition, had contributed a profound article on the then only recently adopted new Patent Law.

    Of course, Professor Guo always was on very friendly terms with the then and later directors of the Max Planck Institute so that time and again, for longer or shorter periods, he came back to the Institute to further study that immense field of IP law. That is true, in particular, when in 1990 the very first Copyright Law of modern China had been adopted. As a copyright specialist myself, I was deeply interested in that new and courageous piece of legislation, and I must confess that, surely with the recommendation of my appreciated colleague, being named guest professor at the famous 人民大学 made me feel really proud. I am so glad that I could meet Professor Guo again, when , invited by your University, I could come to Beijing in 2010 to celebrate with you “One Hundred Years of Chinese Copyright Law”, contributing to that conference with a speech on comparative copyright law.

    So, dear Colleagues, dear Friends, please accept the expression of my sincere sorrow at the death of my old friend and colleague Professor Guo Shoukang, also in the name of my wife Monique, whom he knew very well from a whole number of private and friendly meetings in our family circle.

    I will always remember him as an outstanding professor of your University and, indeed, as a model for the young generation of academics and lawyers of the whole country.

Yours truly
Adolf Dietz

    （编辑 刘韡）