جهانی شدن و مالکیت معنوی در چین

The open door policy since 1979 highlights the globalisation process in China. Since then, all walks of life, and businesses have been affected by globalisation. One clear sign of the global impact is China’s effort to move gradually from a country ruled by government to that ruled by law although this process is slow moving, especially from an enforcement perspective. This paper intends to study the change of intellectual property (IP) environment in China under the global trend of legal harmony. Objectively, this paper discusses and analyses four related topics—the legal system in China, the rapidly expanding scope of IP, the evidential data and analysis of the IP activities, and finally, two cases highlighting practical aspects of IP.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the intellectual property (IP) environment in China under the impact of globalisation. It is no exaggeration to state that a firm cannot commence its business in any country without consulting the national legislation. With the above aim in mind, this paper is divided into four parts. Firstly, it describes the legal system in China, including the legislature, dispute resolution, court system, and characteristics of the Chinese legal system. Thereafter, this section will pay a particular attention to IP since it is an increasingly important dimension in international business (IB) especially from 1995 when the WTO directly integrated IP into IB. Firms are especially concerned about their IP assets because IP provides a competitive edge over rivals. The second section in this paper discusses the rapidly expanding IP scope in the world and related issues in China. The third section provides statistics to highlight the dynamic IP activities, which also shows the increasing awareness of the significance of intellectual assets for firms and individuals. The fourth section outlines two cases to endow the readers with some practical IP experience in China.

This paper has provided an overview of the development of an IP system in China, which must be viewed in the context of globalisation. For example, the Copyright Law was adopted in 1990, but was amended in October 2001 to revise sections that were against the WTO rules. The implementation regulation was further amended in 2002 to ensure that foreign copyright owners receive legal protection equal to that of their Chinese counterparts. There can be no doubt that China has made more significant progress on the protection of IP in recent years. During the past decade or so, a new legal mechanism has been implemented. However, it is likely that amendments will be required with the impact of globalisation. In the meantime, the Chinese authorities publicly have destroyed much pirated material and this will continue until there is general awareness and acceptance of the need for the protection of IP rights.