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Essence of IPR protection
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Winton Dong
WITH China's looming entry to the WTO, the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) has become a critical issue nationwide.
Invited by the State Intellectual Property Office of China, an American delegation visited Shenzhen recently and held a seminar on IPR issues with the city's concerned bureaus. The purpose of the symposium was to exchange information and experiences to increase understanding of the problems encountered by different nations. To see how legal view evaluate Shenzhen's IPR situation, we present here the opinions by three of them.
Andrew Coombs, consultant for Disney
Almost all nations with innovative industries have laws to foster innovation by regulating the copying of inventions, identifying symbols, creative expression and other items within the range of intellectual property.
After communicating with the city's various departments, we have come to realize that Shenzhen has made great progress in protecting such rights in recent years. However, compared with the strict provisions and clauses in the city, we view that enforcement is relatively lagging behind. A good judgment may be easily made, but it is difficult for different bureaus to co-ordinate and enforce it.
Actually infringement of intellectual property has always been a global problem. Indeed, every nation has some degree of infringement within its borders. The same problems also exist in the United States.
Wang Youming, deputy director-general of the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Science and Technology
China has spared no effort in strengthening the protection of intellectual property in recent years. I would illustrate it with the example of Shenzhen, one of the country's most active export-oriented economies.
Since 1996, the Shenzhen Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce has demolished more than 10 underground factories which infringed on the trademarks of Motorola, Intel, UL, Microsoft, 3COM and other famous companies.
Customs offices in the city also actively exercise their power on the border. In the past five years, more than 50 million pirated discs have been seized and 600-odd infringement cases have been dealt with, involving a total of two billion yuan (US$242.4 million).
Moreover, unlike civilian or criminal cases, all intellectual property cases in the city will be firstly tried in intermediate people's courts.
Although we undeniably have some defeciencies in protecting intellectual property rights, the situation is much better than a decade ago, and will be even better after China enter the WTO.
Byran Strickland, trademark inspector of North Carolina.
Compared with North Carolina, Shenzhen has its own characteristics in the protection of such property rights.
Firstly, patents, copyrights, trademarks and commercial secrets are protected by different bureaus in the city, while in our state a unified office takes the responsibilities of all these affairs.
Moreover, intellectual property infringements are usually settled through the courts in North Carolina, but in Shenzhen, such cases are dealt mainly by local administrative organs such as Customs, technical supervision and others.
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