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Round table addresses IPR protection
By Chen Qide (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-10-29 00:42
Shanghai government officials and experts Thursday held a round table
with US counterparts to discuss intellectual property rights policies and
professional training.
Mutual understanding is a prerequisite to new policies and necessary to guard
against intellectual property right (IPR) infringements.
"Co-operation with overseas IPR holders is very important for us to prevent
IPR encroachment," said Xing Dongsheng, director of the Trademark Supervision
Department of the Shanghai Industry and Commerce Administration.
He told participants that without the support and understanding of the
rights' holders, protection is difficult to achieve.
The three-day conference is the first part of a co-operation agreement signed
by the Shanghai IPR Administration and the American Education Foundation in May
2004.
Under the agreement, the city will join hands with the foundation to train 50
senior IPR experts in the United States by 2010. They will be chosen from local
government departments, research institutions and universities.
"The training programme will be a stimulus to the city's establishment of an
IPR talent network," said Chen Zhixing, director of the Shanghai IPR
Administration.
He said the 50 experts make up a small force considering the size of the
metropolis, but the joint effort is a good beginning.
Shanghai has only 500 IPR professionals working in government departments,
courts, universities and intermediary service agencies.
Ten per cent of those are IPR judges in the local courts and 10 per cent IPR
teachers in the universities.
"We need to train more professionals as judges to handle the increasing
number of IPR cases and as teachers to train more students," said Gu Yonghua,
director of the Planning and Development Department of the Shanghai IPR
Administration.
Gu said at the conference that local universities should train at least 2,300
IPR professionals by 2010 to meet the growing demand.
The conference brought together the voices of senior government officials,
industry representatives, educators and legal experts from the United States and
China.
"Their different perspectives will allow us to examine and seek solutions for
IPR professional training courses in the future," Chen said.
Efforts will also be made to find solutions to some of the most pressing IPR
issues affecting industries such as pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, information
technology and entertainment, he said.
Keith Maskus, professor from University of Colorado, appreciated what
Shanghai is doing to protect IPR from infringement, saying without good
trademark protection, Chinese enterprises would be unable to develop in a
healthy way.
"Protection will be an encouragement to creation," Maskus said.
He said it is very easy to imitate low-cost and low-scale products, but
difficult to copy high-tech ones.
Maskus suggested Shanghai develop more high-tech products as a way to protect
IPR since it has more advantages in this field than other parts of China.
His words were echoed by William Cohen, assistant general counsel for Policy
Studies at the US Federal Trade Commission, who said IPR protection policy will
be favourable to more overseas investors in seeking partners in the Chinese
market.
"Otherwise, foreign companies will find it hard to co-operate with their
Chinese partners to develop the local market," Cohen said.
Simultaneous to the conference, the city government has launched a campaign
to raise awareness of IPR and crack down on infringement.
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