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China defends efforts to protect intellectual property rights
2008-11-07
BEIJING (AFP) - China staunchly defended its efforts to protect intellectual property rights Friday, urging Washington to take into account its difficulties as a developing country in tackling copyright breaches. The United States has been an outspoken critic of China's intellectual property right protection, pointing to the number of fake goods swamping the global marketplace and uneven law enforcement. "When assessing China's intellectual property rights protection, the US side should proceed from China's national conditions," assistant commerce minister Chong Quan told US industry and government officials gathering in Beijing. "China is a developing country facing many development problems," he said, adding that Beijing had made "remarkable achievements" on copyright protection in a much shorter period than Western countries. "It only took China 20 years to establish a high level intellectual property rights protection system in line with international practices, which took hundreds of years for Europe and the United States to set up," he said. The US Department of Commerce has China on its priority watch list over intellectual property rights protection, along with eight other countries. It also filed a case in April last year at the World Trade Organisation over widespread copyright piracy in China, a practice that US companies say deprives them of billions of dollars each year. Chong said China took intellectual property seriously, insisting it was fast becoming an important factor in its economic and social development. He defended China's achievements, pointing to a national intellectual property rights strategy established in June and to the prosecution of 4,322 people for copyright breaches in 2007. Chong said that China enjoyed certain advantages compared with developed countries when it came to fighting piracy, including a large law enforcement team and low litigation costs. "Many Chinese colleges and even middle schools set basic courses on intellectual property rights, which hasn't been achieved by many Western countries," he added.
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