Professor Bryan Mercurio, specialist in international economic law, with particular expertise in WTO law, free trade agreements and the intersection between international trade and intellectual property law and Associate Dean of Chinese University of Hong Kong, has written an interesting brief: ‘The Protection and Enforcement of Intellectual Property in China since Accession to the WTO: Progress and Retreat. In just 6 pages professor Mercurio gives the history of IP in China, and is going direct to the essence:
What are the reasons behind China’s apparent failure to adequately enforce its IPRs? Is the central government unwilling or powerless? And professor Mercurio acknowledges that the level of protection/enforcement is different for trademark, copyright and patents. You can find the article in the special “China’s WTO Decade’ of China Perspectives, a quarterly published by the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC), here (starting on page 23).