The European Union will not take part in a WTO consultation process launched by the US in an effort to force China to do more to combat IP infringement.
The US officially filed a request for consultation on Tuesday April 10 (the documents are available here and here).Other WTO member states have 10 days to decide whether to join the consultation process.
If countries wish to join as complainants they may put their names to the original request for consultations or they may submit their own request, which means launching a separate case. If the dispute is not resolved during the consultation phase then the case moves on to a panel stage. If different countries have brought separate cases then these can often be heard simultaneously by the same panel.
Viviane Reding, the EU Information Society and Media Commissioner, told journalists in Beijing last week: "At the moment the European Union is pursuing IP issues with the Chinese authorities on a bilateral basis and will follow the WTO proceedings launched by the US as observers, but will not formally join them."
Other countries are considering their position.
In October 2005 Japan and Switzerland joined US efforts to request China to provide details of its efforts to enforce IP laws to help them assess whether the country was doing enough to tackle infringement. They are now deciding whether to support America's latest IP offensive.
A spokesperson at the Japanese Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry told MIP Week that officials will decide early next week after having examined the recent judicial interpretation issued by China's Supreme Court which halved some of the thresholds required for criminal enforcement of IP cases.
The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs in Switzerland had no comment at the time of going to press, but promised to reveal its plans before Wednesday.
Australia, which is negotiating a free trade agreement with China that has fuelled domestic concerns about China's record of IP enforcement, is also undecided. Warren Truss, trade minister for Australia, said on Thursday that the ministry was considering its position.
"It's a possibility," he said. "We are consulting with industry and seeing whether this change is enough."
Chinese officials have made a number of statements and policy announcements in the past two weeks to demonstrate that the government is taking action to fight piracy and counterfeiting. In addition to the new Judicial Interpretation issued by China's Supreme Court and the Procuratorate, officials revealed a national action plan on IPR protection 2007 on April 6.
In it, the government promises to accelerate the revision of the trade mark law and to "study on the improvement of the copyright law". The text also states that the government aims "to harness criminalization tools to achieve better punitive and deterrent effects," but gives no detail about how this would be achieved.
On April 13 Tian Lipu, commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office said: "It is not a sensible nor a rational move for the US government to file such a complaint [with the WTO]."
A statement from SIPO went on to attribute the US case to the Bush administration's attempts to deal with political anger over rising trade deficits with China.
Zhengfa Wang, a partner of China Patent Agent (HK) in Beijing, told MIP Week that "China is trying very hard to strengthen enforcement," and pointed out that counterfeiting is a global problem that does not only affect China.
State media reported last week that China will now allow foreigners involved in legal challenges to attend IP trials as part of efforts to improve transparency.
And on Saturday, China's official news agency Xinhua said that officials had destroyed 30 million pieces of pirated digital DVDs, VCDs, CDs and computer software as part of a campaign to raise awareness of IP issues in the build up to World Intellectual Property day on April 26.
