Crackdown on pirated goods sees results
By Wu Yong and Wang Ziyi (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-06 06:19

Mark Cohen, the intellectual property attache of the US Embassy in Beijing, once agreed that China has made a big effort to crack down on piracy and improve public awareness of IPR protection.

But he also agreed that it is not an easy task.

"The point is that the government can only encourage IPR protection. But it should help individuals protect their goods by themselves," he said.

There are two solutions to this, one is to stop piracy and the other is to provide legal products.

China keeps working on improving the protection legislation with judiciaries adopting a more hard line approach for IPR violators.

It has made clear that offenders pirating more than 250,000 yuan's (US$30,000) worth of copyrighted products can be jailed for up to seven years.

Since the beginning of the campaign, Chen has been providing more discounts on legal products to encourage more legitimate sales.

"If the government gets rid of pirated products and we provide cheaper legitimate ones, the future market will become more promising," said Chen.