Protecting culture

China has set up a national centre to better protect the country's rich, intangible cultural heritage.

"With the establishment of the centre, we hope to complete a nationwide assessment of the country's intangible cultural heritage in three years," says Wang Wenzhang, president of Academy of Arts of China, which supervises the centre.

Cultural heritage in China is facing a rigorous challenge in its battle against urbanization and globalization.

Wang says the national centre will focus on academic study, investigation and promotion of China's intangible cultural heritage in a bid to better conserve it.

In June, the Chinese State Council published its first intangible heritage list, which includes the Spring Festival, Peking Opera, acupuncture, the Legend of Madame White Snake and Shaolin Kungfu.

The list contains 518 items in 10 categories, covering folk literature, folk music and dance, traditional opera, ballad singing, cross-talk, acrobatics, folk fine arts, traditional handicraft, traditional medicine and folk customs.

In 2001, China's Kunqu opera was listed by UNESCO as a "masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity".

Online downloading

The first game software online distribution channel was recently launched by Internet portal Sina and the online copyright software distributor PC Stars.

Pirated PC game software is widespread in China, which has put game developers in a very difficult situation and forced them to turn to online games to make money. PC Stars decided to learn from the business model of online software distributors from the United States and Europe.

Players can now download more than 30 games at a price as cheap as 3 yuan (38 US cents) a month, which solves the problem of an efficient distribution channel and revives the life of PC games.

Online distribution reduces the costs of traditional retail outlets, increases the launch speed of game titles, and saves money for players. The model has been quite popular in mature markets.

PC Stars also adopted the latest Digital Rights Management mechanisms to protect the interests of copyright owners and prevent piracy.

IPR course

Sponsored by the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), the national senior training course on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) law was opened in Tsinghua University. Tian Lipu, Commissioner of SIPO and Cen Zhangzhi, Vice President of Tsinghua University attended the opening ceremony.

During his lecture, Tian Lipu mainly introduced the background, preparatory work, key points and suggestions of the third amendment to the Patent Law.

Tian explained major revisions and put forward suggestions on several aspects including ascription and assignment of patents, appraisal standards of novelty for common and existing technology, genetic resources protection, a protection system of design patents, compulsory license systems and administrative as well as judicial protection of patent rights.

TVB wins case

Television Broadcast Ltd (TVB), Hong Kong's dominant free-to-air broadcaster, says it had won an Internet piracy case against a mainland website as the mainland steps up efforts to enforce copyright laws.

The Higher Court of Guangdong Province ordered the website www.21cn.com to pay 200,000 yuan (US$25,000) as compensation to TVB for illegally distributing its shows, including the 2003 Miss Hong Kong pageant, TVB says in a statement.

"Fighting piracy is an extremely tough battle," it says. "TVB is determined to pursue this case until www.21cn.com removes all its programmes from the website."

Rip-offs destroyed

The Beijing Leading Group of Anti-pornography and Anti-illegal Publications has held an activity to destroy the one million pieces of pirated audio/video (AV) products and computer software confiscated in the "100-day Campaign Against Piracy".

In the first and second phases of the 100-day Campaign Against Piracy (from July 15 to September 15), Beijing has achieved solid results: 10,285 law enforcement persons were deployed, 5,689 inspections were made, more than one million pirated AV products were seized, 11 illegal AV shops were shut down. Furthermore, three cases of illegal computer software were handled, and nearly 20 sets of pirated computer software were seized, with a value of 10 million yuan (US$ 1.25million).

Italy-China co-operation

Aiming to promote the development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the Sino-Italy High-level Forum on Intellectual Property rights (IPR) was held in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province on September 16, which attracted nearly 300 people, including the Vice Director of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) Li Yuguang, Vice Mayor of Guangzhou Wang Xiaoling and State Secretary of Ministry of Economic Development of Italy Alfonso Gianni.

At the forum, the two sides talked about IPR administration and protection. Alfonso Gianni expressed that with an increasingly integrated global economy, the protection of SMEs in international competition is very important.

Concerning the above issue, Wang Xiaoling says SMEs in Guangzhou have shown their innovation capability. However, IPR, a fundamental factor for businesses to survive, is still vulnerable. To support the development of SMEs, the government should encourage enterprises to exert innovation capability and protect their IPR, he says.

(China Daily 09/25/2006 page9)