Law enforcement to apply tech to help cyberspace counterfeit crackdowns

China's top market regulator has pledged to apply more technologies into law enforcement to increase crackdowns on counterfeits and unqualified goods in cyberspace, so that intellectual property rights can be strongly protected.

The pledge was made by Tong Bo, an official from the State Administration for Market Regulation, on Tuesday while introducing its achievements against IP violations.

She said that the administration has planned to take advantage of big data, cloud computing and mobile network in law enforcement, "aiming to improve our capability of finding and identifying IP violations."

According to her, a crackdown on fighting online IP infringements was jointly launched by the administration and several other authorities, including the Ministry of Public Security and the China National Intellectual Property Administration, in June last year.

"The aim of the crackdown was to urge internet platforms to perform their duties, as well as to regulate the market order in cyberspace and purify the online business environment," she said.

She cited data as revealing that during the crackdown, market regulators at all levels dealt with 27,000 online cases involving IP infringement, of which, 267 were transferred to public security bureaus to further investigate.

The market regulators nationwide also removed about 160,000 pieces of information regarding counterfeit goods, with the shutdown of 1,374 websites, she said.

In addition, 7,390 online shops were required to stop their platform services after being found to have problems, she added.

"Similar actions are carrying on," she said, releasing that the top market regulator has continued, since March, to jointly strengthen IP protection online and severely combat counterfeits in cyberspace.