Recently, the 6th China-US Strategic & Economic Dialogue closed in Beijing, both parties exchanged ideas frankly and achieved broad consensus on many topics including bilateral, regional and global issues. And the exchange and cooperation between both parties in many IP issues including business secret protection would be the highlight of the dialogue.

Liu Haibo, the researcher of the Institute of Science & Technology Policy and Management Science, Chinese Academy of Science, said, in 2013, labor-extensive products remained dominant in China's exporting to US, while intellectual-property-extensive products importing from US appeared to increase. For the trade of products, China's trade surplus to the United States declined, because intellectual-property-extensive products played the role of "pioneer". "Even for China's mobile communications products, the fastest increasingly exporting products to US, the core technology patents are controlled in advanced technology research and development enterprises such as Qualcomm. If we cannot upgrade the competitiveness of our own IP reliant products fast and significantly, we cannot realize the transformation from the trade giant to trade power."

During the dialogue, China and the U.S. both confirmed that, both parties disagreed to gain the commercial advantage through theft of trade secrets, and trade secrets protection and law enforcement are crucial to the maintaining of fair play and innovation of economic development. Both parties would take penal code and other measures according to the law to prevent the theft of trade secrets, and the movement will be made known to the public.

According to the statistics, the US's lawsuit to China's enterprises on trade secrets infringement and business spy issues increases about 10%, far more rapidly than the patent infringement cases. Li Shunde, the Dean of Legal and Intellectual Property Department, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, held  that China's enterprises, especially Hi-technology enterprises, often confront the trade secrets dispute when going out recently, and this shows their competitiveness has gained the attention from the foreign rivals. "It appears to be the trade secret competition, actually, it's market competition." Li indicates, when going out, China's innovative enterprises cannot be careless in trade secret protection. The cooperation on administrative and judicial protection of intellectual property is the key point of China-US Strategic & Economic Dialogue. During this dialogue, both parties indicated, on the base of successful communication of IP Work Group in China-US Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, Chin
a and the U.S. will continue to promote the exchange on law enforcement, transparency and IP court between both IP related departments including judicial and administrative departments.

He Lianhong, the Executive President of Institute of Intellectual Property, Central South University, said, "Differences in history, culture, economic development and political views between China and the United States lead to the dispute on IP administrative and judicial protection. The U.S. pays attention to China's intellectual property policy, focusing on trade-related IP enforcement. But for China, strengthening the law enforcement is the method, while encouraging creation and promoting the utilization is the target."

 (China IP News)