Tian Lipu, Commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office indicated on the afternoon of October 18 that the fundamental reason for China to implement IP strategy is the internal demands for the development of China itself while not making a show to the outside world or influenced by outside pressures.

 

Tian made the comment when he met the press at the information center of the 17th CPC National Congress. He noted that given China cannot protect IPR effectively, China itself would suffer most from the result. For instance, during a special action of IPR protection, 90 percent of the pirated disks discovered were sourced from Chinese video products. In this sense, Chinese culture industry suffers great losses from piracy.

 

He admitted that many problems still exist in China IP sector, but the problems are not as serious as some people's imagination. Actually, foreign enterprises are confident in China's IP system, including their recognition to China's market, system and legal environments. Otherwise, their patent applications to China would not have been growing at an annual rate of more than 20 percent.

 

Tian indicated that Chinese people did not have the idea of intellectual property in their minds for several thousands of years and the term "intellectual property" was included in Chinese authoritative dictionary in 2000. China established IP protection system in 1985 and it is impossible to expect China to resolve all the problems within only 20-plus years.

 

He stressed that the fundamental task is to improve Chinese people's IP consciousness. "For instance, a rural couple go to work in urban area. The husband sells watermelon and the wife sells pirated disks. Actually they do not know the difference of the producing process of the pulp of a watermelon and the movie inside a disk." Tian said frankly that to resolve the problem, China needs to make efforts of several generations.

2007-10-22

2007-10-22