The country's top judicial bodies have stepped up the fight against intellectual piracy by lowering the threshold at which a criminal act is deemed to have occurred and rolling out heavier punishments for violators.

A new judicial interpretation issued yesterday states that anyone who manufactures 500 or more counterfeit copies (discs) of computer software, music, movies, TV series or other audio-video products could face a prison term of up to three years.

The document was jointly issued by the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

The interpretation also expands the definition of a "serious IPR offender". Under the new terms, anyone who produces more than 2,500 counterfeit copies can now be thrown into jail for up to seven years.

The rules took immediate effect, the document said. They replaced rules dating back to 2004 that set a limit of 1,000 pirated discs and which defined "serious offenders" as those who produced over 5,000 copies.

The new interpretation also enhanced the fines available in IPR cases. Fines would aim to "strip violators of the economic capability and conditions to commit crime".

The new explanation stipulates that fines for IPR violations would range from "one to five times their illegal income, or between 50 and 100 percent of sales value of the goods produced".

Sources with the Supreme People's Court said the changes had been made in order to deal with "new problems" in the crackdown on piracy.

"The courts will extend the protection of intellectual property rights and do their utmost to both punish offenders and prevent crime," a court spokesman said.

In its fight against rampant piracy, China previously lowered the counterfeit product threshold in 2004. Official statistics showed a 28 percent increase in the number of IPR cases coming to court in 2005, the first year of the new rules.

That year, 3,567 cases involving the manufacture of fake products or the illegal sales of pirated products were tried in court.

Observers expect a new surge in IPR cases under the even tougher regulations, which they saw as a stern warning to pirates that the government would not go soft on IPR infringement.

The announcement should come as welcome news to people who have complained that monetary punishments for piracy violators are negligible and that "the cost of IPR crime" remains low.

In January, the top court issued a notice ordering stricter penalties for IPR violators, saying "IPR violators' illegal gains and production tools should be confiscated and their pirated products destroyed".

The new interpretation also tightens the conditions under which probation can be granted.

And in a further expansion of the IPR net, the top court has instructed IPR criminal courts to accept litigation cases filed by the individual victims of piracy as well as those filed by procurators.

Xinhua contributed to the story

(China Daily 04/06/2007 page3)