Editor's note: 2008 held several landmarks for China's intellectual property rights (IPR) system. In addition to marking the 30th anniversary of the nation's reform and opening-up, it was also the inaugural year for the implementation of a national intellectual property strategy and a notable period for filings, with 828,328 patent and 698,000 trademark registration applications filed last year.

After China launched its Compendium of the National Intellectual Property Strategy, the State Intellectual Property Office recently (SIPO) released a White Paper on China's intellectual property protection in 2008.

The report summarizes last year's IPR protection in China, detailing revision and amendment of legislation, enforcement of IPRs, judicial protection, Olympic IPR protection and international IPR cooperation.

China Business Weekly will publish the full text of the White Paper in a series during the following weeks. The second installment, on IPR examination and registration, was published on June 8. The third segment follows:

III. IPR enforcement makes breakthroughs

In 2008, authorities focused on combating piracy and regulating market order, effectively protecting Olympic IPR and cracking down on various violations.

IP administrations across the nation waged aggressive IPR enforcement campaigns, gave assistance to IP enforcement, intensified processing of patent disputes and cracked down on cases of fake patent identities and counterfeit patents.

In February 2008, SIPO issued a circular on the launch of the Thunderstorm and Skynet IP enforcement campaigns, which demanded local patent authorities wage both campaigns for a year.

Thunderstorm combated IP violations, in particular malicious, group and repeated infringement, faking identities or faking IP belonging to others, while Skynet struck at fraud relating to patents.

The two campaigns significantly curbed patent fraud and upheld the legitimate rights and interests of right holders and the public.

In November 2008, SIPO held the National IP Enforcement Assistance Roundtable and approved operation of 44 IPR enforcement assistance centers nationwide by the end of 2008.

Local IP administrations nationwide received a total of 1,092 patent disputes over infringement and 34 other types of patent disputes last year. They handled 59 cases of counterfeit patents and 601 cases of using others' patents. In law enforcement actions, 17,056 officer visits were dispatched to inspect and investigate 7,671 commercial sites and more than 2.1 million product items were inspected. Twenty-one cases were handed over to police and 11 cases were received from them. A total of 327 joint law enforcement actions were organized and 262 cross-region actions were launched.

In 2008, administrations for industry and commerce (AICs) at all levels across China investigated 56,634 cases of trademark violations, 47,045 of which were for infringement and counterfeiting, and 9,589 were general violations. A total of 10,965 involved Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and foreign trademark holders.

AICs seized and removed 19.63 million illegal trademark labels, seized and destroyed 22.87 million items, imposed 467.4 million yuan in fines and handed over 137 cases and 145 suspects to judicial authorities for suspected criminal violation.

From June 1 to September 30, 2008, the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC), Ministry of Public Security (MPS), Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) waged a special four-month campaign against piracy on the Internet.

During the campaign, authorities across the country handled 453 Internet infringement cases, shut down 192 websites engaging in piracy and ordered 173 websites to delete or block infringing content. With regard to the 88 websites with serious violations, apart from being ordered to delete or block infringing content, they were also administratively penalized 1.08 million yuan in fines and 184 servers and other items of hardware were seized. Ten serious copyright cases suspected of criminal violations were handed over to judicial authorities.

In 2008, the NCAC made great progress in promoting use of licensed software in enterprises. Following 1,500 large enterprises that joined the list of those using licensed software in 2007, another 7,600 enterprises were listed in 2008. Central and local government groups checked 6,100 enterprises, supervised almost 3,900 enterprises and caught 570 wrongdoers.

As well, 300 training courses were held for 8,200 enterprises and 18,200 people. Use of licensed software achieved substantial progress in State-owned, large private and foreign-funded enterprises and in key sectors such as finance, coal mining, printing, hotels, Internet cafes and design studios.

In 2008, customs nationwide seized 11,135 batches of imported or exported cargo involving 600 million items of infringing goods, up 49.3 percent and 93 percent respectively. IPR holders continued depositing information on their intellectual rights with customs. From January to November, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) certified 2,292 deposits, about the same number as in 2007.

With 2008 marking both the Beijing Olympics and celebration of 30 years of reform and open-up, the Ministry of Culture waged an operation to safeguard the Olympics in the cultural market, cracking down on illegal audio-video products and regulating market order. The Ministry of Culture directly monitored the proceedings, including a case of illegal reproduction of CDs in Hainan and a Tianjin organization distributing pirated disks.

In 2008, the MPS formed a coordination mechanism in IPR protection with SAIC, GAC, NCAC respectively. In June, MPS and SIPO jointly issued a circular On the Establishment of Inter-Agency Coordination Mechanism in IPR Protection, formally shaped the mechanism coordinating the two agencies in IPR protection and offered strong systematic safeguards for tightening IPR protection.

(China Daily 06/29/2009 page9)