Intellectual Property Rights and the Piracy War in China Essay

Introduction With a population of 1.357 billion (2013)3, China is the most populated country in the world. Along with the huge population comes a market that is unmatched by any other country of the world. Both domestic companies and foreign companies want to tap into this large market that just recently embraced capitalism and entered into the World Trade Organization. China also provided a labor force that is able to tackle both white-collar and blue-collar job positions. This made foreign companies rush both monetary and technological resources into China to utilize the manufacturing and development power. Both Microsoft and Sun have created research and development centers to implement and design software applications in China. Domestic companies are not far behind either, for example, China's own Evermore Software is on the rise to challenge Microsoft's office suite with its own.4 With the boom of technology in China and the new capitalism ideas, China also has a huge piracy problem. According to the International Intellectual Property Alliance's 2003 report on China, the piracy problem in China creates $1.85 billion in 2002 alone with 90% piracy rates for all copyrighted materials.5 This piracy problem affects negatively on China's global relations and economic improvements. China's current copyright laws are still in its teenage years, and the fast pace of technological advancement isn't helping either. In this paper, I will attempt to describe the piracy problem in China, discuss how the Chinese government is dealing with it, present the global effect, and finally arrive at what would be an ethical solution to piracy fitting for China's situation. The Piracy Problem Asia... .../ch.html#top 4. Joris Evers, IDG News Service, Chinese company to challenge Microsoft's Office, http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/01/26/HNdemochina_1.html 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17. International Intellectual Protection Association Country Paper on China http://www.iipa.com/countryreports.html 13. Fan Zhang and Dennis Xie, Chinese Copyright Protection Has Storied History, Strong Future, http://www.sourcetrix.com/docs/Whitepaper-China_Intellectual_Property.pdf 14. Cheng-China Huang, A Brief Chronology of China's Intellectual Property Protection, http://www.american.edu/ted/hpages/ipr/cheng.htm 15. The Copyright Law of China, http://www.ncac.gov.cn/ 16. Copyright Protection Center of China, http://www.ccopyright.com.cn/ 18. June 11, 2002, People's Daily, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200206/11/eng20020611_97613.shtml