Wu: US piracy case will harm trade ties

China has made great strides in protecting patents and copyrights and a US complaints over commercial piracy would "seriously harm" cooperation, Vice Premier Wu Yi said on Tuesday.

Earlier this month, the United States launched two cases at the WTO claiming that Beijing was not doing enough to punish illegal copiers of films and music and that Chinese restrictions on entertainment imports violated trade rules.

China denounced Washington's complaint and, Wu, who heads the country's economic dialogue with Washington, bluntly warned that the complaints would bruise bilateral trade ties.

"The United States Trade Representative, the USTR, has totally ignored the massive strides China has made," Wu told an intellectual property forum in Beijing.

The US action "flies in the face of the agreement between the two country's leaders to propose dialogue as a way of settling disputes," Wu said, adding that never before had a WTO member simultaneously mounted two cases against another country.

"This will have an utterly negative impact and will inevitably badly damage bilateral intellectual property cooperation," she said, also warning it would "harm" cooperation over market access issues.

On Monday, China sought to demonstrate its determination to stop commercial piracy by releasing an intellectual property action plan.

China would draft and implement 14 laws on intellectual property rights and usage, and issue explanations and guiding policies for handling IPR violation cases, according to the notice.

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