Infringement war not yet won, despite big victories

The Chinese government, judicial institutions and companies have introduced numerous innovative measures in recent years to protect intellectual property rights, in the face of ever-more sophisticated infringement methods, according to officials and industry insiders speaking at the seventh China IP International Annual Forum that was recently held in Beijing.

Lin Guanghai, vice-presiding judge of the IP tribunal at the Supreme People's Court, said that courts nationwide accepted more than 132,000 IP civil cases in the first 11 months last year, along with more than 6,000 administrative cases involving trademarks and patents.

Song Yushui, vice-president of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, said she has witnessed a rise in certain types of cases in recent years, including those involving strategic high technologies, those in which both parties are foreign and those involving large compensation claims.

"The Beijing IP Court is becoming a preferred venue for filing international lawsuits," Song said.

The court has taken a range of steps to enhance protection, such as larger fines and introducing an innovative burden of proof system. It has also hired industry experts to consult in some of the more complicated technical disputes.

In addition, the National Copyright Administration is regulating online copyrights by categorizing them. The categories include online music, literature, cloud storage, apps and app stores, said Duan Yuping, deputy director of the copyright management division at the NCA.

The administration's key targets include 16 websites for video streaming, 20 for music and 20 for literature, requiring that licensing certificates are provided for all content.

Since 2005, the NCA has organized the annual anti-online piracy Jianwang Operation, in cooperation with other administrations. It had investigated in more than 5,000 cases by 2015, involving total fines of over 15 million yuan ($2.2 million). In 2016 alone, 290 illegal websites that provided unlicensed content were shut down.

"We are glad to see that the measures taken over the past few years and efforts from many sides have led to positive changes," Duan said.

Despite the progress, a number of challenges remain, said Fan Liming, vice-president of Shanghai-based IP service agency Sinofaith.

The first challenge is the quality of IP, he commented, adding that a high-quality IP nation is the result of strong innovation ability combined with strong motivation, both of which take years to cultivate.

Another challenge is brought by the development of e-commerce and online music platforms. "The main battlefield of IP protection is moving to the online world today," Fan said. "The technical problems must be solved by technical means."

He suggested using professional software and big data to deal with online counterfeiting, and called for a "well-regulated and healthily-developing" internet economy, jointly built by the government, rights owners, platform operators, IP service agencies and consumers.