© The Authors (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved
Sino-US intellectual property dispute: a new chapter in WTO history
Legal context: On 10 April 2007, the United States requested consultations with China concerning the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in China. The consultations touch on four issues, namely (1) the thresholds for criminal penalties for certain intellectual property infringement activities, (2) customs' disposal of confiscated goods that infringe intellectual property rights; (3) the scope of coverage of criminal procedures and penalties for unauthorized reproduction and/or distribution of copyrighted works; and (4) the denial of copyright protection of pre-censored works.
Key points: The article analyzes and compares the TRIPS rules and the Chinese domestic legislation and judiciary practice in relation to each of the above issues with an intention to verify if the allegations of the United States are based on correct understanding of Chinese law and whether Chinese law is fully consistent with TRIPS rules.
Practical significance: This article may help the United States and China (as well as the DSB panel hopefully) to focus on the real differences between the TRIPS requirements and Chinese law, rather than wasting time on the false issues resulting from misinterpretation of Chinese law.
Key Words: It is well known that the USA is an aggressive proponent of the use of WTO dispute resolutions in its campaign against jurisdictions that fail to match up to TRIPs protection standards, and that China is the source of many complaints on the part of the USA. • A closer look at the relevant provisions of TRIPs and of national legal provisions in China reveals that some of the complaints of non-compliance may be hard to sustain. • In this article, each IP-related complaint levelled by the USA is held up to scrutiny, examining it within the context of Chinese law and interpretational guidance. The authors then predict possible grounds upon which future complaints may be lodged.
* Lanye Zhu, Professor of Law, East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Jiarui Liu, PhD, the Intellectual Property Center, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, People's Republic of China; LLM, University of Washington Law School, USA.