Intellectual Property Rights 
Intellectual Property Rights
In the accession, there is no specific commitment in intellectual property rights area for China to achieve. However, GATT, GATS and TRIPS are the three major agreements in WTO, representing international trade, services and trade-related intellectual property rights (IPR), to regulate the rules for WTO’s members to obey. So upon accession to WTO in 2001, China acquiescently acceded to the WTO agreements including TRIPS.
Improvement in IPR Protection With technical disadvantage, intellectual property right protection in China did not be highlighted before. Lacking of legal basic regulation as well as weak public consciousness, infringement behaviors, counterfeits and embezzling the trademarks were rampant. On the contrary, in the developed countries, the strong protection of IPR is one of the driving engines for economic growth, which also gradually becomes a mean for increasing market core competitiveness and market monopoly. Consequently, it was a significant challenge in China’s accession to WTO. After joining in WTO, China do has some changes in order to build up the protection for IPR. In terms of the legal system, China established a group for national IPR strategy making and amended several laws, like Copyright Law, Patent Law, Trademark Act and Anti-unfair competition Law to enhance the IPR protection. The IPR-related legal system has been modified and improved so as to be consistent with the international standard and conform to the requirements of the WTO rules. Moreover, with extensive popularization, the IPR protecting conscious has been raised, which can reflect from the accepted patent applications. From the chart, we can see that the number for patents accepted increased from over 105,000 cases in 2000 to over 1 million in 2012. Besides, the government encouraged the enterprises to build up and reinforce their IPR system so as to improve their protecting conscious.
2000-2012 China Patents Accepted Situation1
In the accession, there is no specific commitment in intellectual property rights area for China to achieve. However, GATT, GATS and TRIPS are the three major agreements in WTO, representing international trade, services and trade-related intellectual property rights (IPR), to regulate the rules for WTO’s members to obey. So upon accession to WTO in 2001, China acquiescently acceded to the WTO agreements including TRIPS.
Improvement in IPR Protection With technical disadvantage, intellectual property right protection in China did not be highlighted before. Lacking of legal basic regulation as well as weak public consciousness, infringement behaviors, counterfeits and embezzling the trademarks were rampant. On the contrary, in the developed countries, the strong protection of IPR is one of the driving engines for economic growth, which also gradually becomes a mean for increasing market core competitiveness and market monopoly. Consequently, it was a significant challenge in China’s accession to WTO. After joining in WTO, China do has some changes in order to build up the protection for IPR. In terms of the legal system, China established a group for national IPR strategy making and amended several laws, like Copyright Law, Patent Law, Trademark Act and Anti-unfair competition Law to enhance the IPR protection. The IPR-related legal system has been modified and improved so as to be consistent with the international standard and conform to the requirements of the WTO rules. Moreover, with extensive popularization, the IPR protecting conscious has been raised, which can reflect from the accepted patent applications. From the chart, we can see that the number for patents accepted increased from over 105,000 cases in 2000 to over 1 million in 2012. Besides, the government encouraged the enterprises to build up and reinforce their IPR system so as to improve their protecting conscious.
2000-2012 China Patents Accepted Situation1
References: HAN L.Y. (2011) 入世对中国法治的影响. Journal of China Youth College for Political Sciences, 2011, Issue 05, pp.115-127 (for an understanding on the changes in IPR after joining the WTO) ZHOU Z.H. (2000) 对中国“入世”的法律思考. Tribune of Political Science and Law(Journal of China University of Political Science and Law), 2000, Issue 2, pp.5-12 (for an understanding from a legal aspect on IPR) LIU C. (2009) WTO争端解决机制下知识产权个案的启示与思考. WTO经济导刊, 2009, Issue 1, pp.90-91 (to understand the weakness and improvement on IPR) LI Y.L., XU X.L. (2011) 与贸易有关的WTO知识产权案分析. Practice in Foreign Economic Relations and Trade, 2011, Issue 5, pp.42-45 (to generally understand the trade-related IPR case) GUO S. K. (2011) 入世10年中国知识产权事业回顾与展望. Retrieved from http://www.chinaipmagazine.com/rsip/InfoShow.asp?id=5150 (for a depth review for improvement of IPR protection since 2001)