The US said China has failed to crack down on counterfeiters and pirates of copyrighted movies, and laid out improvements Chinese authorities must take to avoid a dispute over the issue at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
In a report on protection of intellectual property rights globally, the US Trade Representative's office elevated China into its "priority watch list" of countries that are among the worst offenders of trademarks and copyrights. That list also includes Russia, Brazil, Pakistan and 10 other nations.
The trade office will use the procedures of the WTO to prod China to provide details on its enforcement of counterfeiting laws, including what criminal penalties have been handed out to movie and music pirates.
"China must take action to address rampant piracy and counterfeiting, including increasing the number of criminal cases and further opening its market to legitimate copyright and other goods," Acting US Trade Representative Peter Allgeier said in a statement.
The theft of copyrighted materials has become the largest irritant in the US$190 billion annual commercial relationship between the US and China.
More than 1,500 record, movie and software companies banded together in February to petition the Bush administration to immediately bring China into consultations at the WTO over pirated merchandise they say sapped US$2.5 billion in sales last year.
The Bush administration stopped short of that action today, even as it acknowledged that China has failed to live up to promises it made a year ago to crack down on the problem.
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington defended the country's enforcement efforts.
"China has done a lot to protect intellectual property rights," said the spokesman, Chu Maoming. "Last year alone, more than 9,000 cases were filed."
Makers of auto parts, clothing, pharmaceuticals and other goods also complain about Chinese producers counterfeiting their merchandise, stealing the designs or technology of their products, and mislabeling cheap products as brand-name goods.
"We're bleeding here, and our folks are not happy," said Eric Smith, president of the International Intellectual Property Alliance, which represents software, publishing, entertainment and music associations.
The US Trade Representative's office in September asked companies to provide details of Chinese theft of trademarks and patents as part of a special review of China's anti-counterfeiting measures. The review may form the basis of a WTO complaint, it said.
A criminal network distributed counterfeit Viagra through as many as 30 brokers in the US and 10 other countries, Pfizer Inc said a year ago, and the US has complained that many Chinese government offices are using illegal copies of Microsoft Corp's software.
The US said Ukraine was the worst violator of intellectual property rights, the same ranking it held last year. The 13 countries with China on the priority watch list are: Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Turkey and Venezuela.
All 20 members of the Senate Finance Committee sent a letter to US President George W. Bush yesterday urging him to get "immediate results" from China on its protection of trademarks.
"We urge your administration to intensify your efforts to ensure China's compliance with its" WTO obligations, the senators wrote in their letter.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained