White
Paper on IPR Protection in China
The
State Council Information Office published on April 21, 2005, a white
paper titled New Progress in China's Protection of Intellectual Property
Rights.
The nine-chapter white paper highlights four major progresses which
have been made on IPR protection in China over the past years. These
progresses are as follows:
1. A relatively complete
system of laws and regulations that covers a wide range of subjects
and is in line with generally accepted international rules has been
established and keeps improving;
2.
A coordinated and efficient work system and a law enforcement mechanism
have been established and improved;
3.
Administrative law enforcement has been strengthened in IPR protection;
and
4.
Efforts are being made to heighten the awareness of the general public
about IPR and actively fulfilling the international obligations to protect
IPR.
In addition, it summed up eight achievements made by the Chinese government
in 2004.
1. According to statistics,
in 2004 alone, administrative organs of industry and commerce across
China investigated and dealt with 51,851 law-violation cases involving
trademarks. The cultural market inspecting and management authorities
throughout the country inspected audio-video businesses on 555,368 occasions,
confiscating 154 million illegal copies of audio-video works.
2.
In recent years, China has gradually established a whole set of systems
for the management of audio and video products, which mainly includes
mainly includes an IPR protection system, audio and video business license
system, exclusive publication right system, duplication authorization
system, SID code system, censorship system for imported audio and video
products, the system of awards for informants, the system of uniform
anti-counterfeit labels for audio and video products, the system of
registration and filing of audio and video products in storehouses,
and the system of inspection of, report on and keeping the public informed
of illegal audio and video products.
3.
In 2004, the copyright administrative management departments at all
levels accepted 9,691 cases of infringement, resolved 9,497 of them
and imposed administrative sanctions on the infringers in 7,986 cases.
These included the investigation and punishment of two Chinese enterprises
that had infringed upon the copyright of the Microsoft Corporation of
the United States and other major cases.
4.
The port customs all over China focus law enforcement on import and
export of fake and pirated products. From 1996 to 2004, the Chinese
customs ferreted out 4,361 cases of right infringement in import and
export, which involved 630 million yuan.
5.
From 2000 to 2004, the Chinese public security organs cracked 5,305
cases of criminal infringement on IPR, which involved nearly 2.2 billion
yuan, and arrested 7,100 suspects.
6.
To correctly apply laws and make law enforcement standards coherent,
as well as based on its experience in handling IPR-related cases, the
Supreme People's Court of China has formulated a series of relevant
judicial interpretations in accordance with the law, and improved a
series of important IPR-related law application principles.
7.
By the end of 2004, the State Intellectual Property Office had approved
1,255,499 patents. Of these, 1,093,268 were domestic ones, and 162,231
were from other countries, accounting for 87.1 and 12. 9 percent of
the total number of approved patents, respectively.
8.
As improvements are made in the legal system concerning trademarks and
as the general public's awareness about trademarks is heightened, applications
for trademark registration in China have soared in recent years. By
the end of 2004, China had had 2,240,000 registered trademarks.
In 1994, a similar white paper was published.
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