Recently, a video conference was held between officials from Intellectual property (IP) Offices in China and Russia to discuss potential cooperation to crack down on pirated products.
Official from the National Copyright Administration (NCAC) introduced China’s legislation and enforcement in copyright protection to the Russian delegation. It is learned that China has a comparatively complete copyright legislation and has issued a series of regulations to safeguard copyright in recent years. With regard to administrative enforcement, special actions were already launched by the Chinese authorities against copyright piracy in 2013. Legitimate use of software is required in governments and Chinese enterprises.
In order to severely punish the copyright infringement, some measures are implemented such as a term of imprisonment from three to seven years, reward of 300,000 RMB for those who report an unauthorized compact disk production line. Until now, enforcement authorities have cracked down upon 233 such illegal production lines, and have shut down or punished another 8 enterprises with legal business certificates but engaged in piracy production.
The Russian delegation called on cooperation and coordination between enforcement authorities such as China's Ministry of Public Security and Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs, China’s Customs and Russia’s Customs. And the efforts to crackdown upon piracy should be further strengthened.
In the year of 2012, with efforts of Chinese copyright administrations at all levels, 107 million items of pirated products were seized nationwide, including over 19.08 million illegal copies of books, 1.14 copies of million periodicals, 65.87 million items of audiovisual products, 13.01 million electrical publication discs, 7.74 million pirated software discs and 90 thousand items in other forms, according to statistics from the NCAC.
