The International Strong Protection Trend Of Intellectual Property

With the rapid development of global knowledge-based economy, countries paymore attention to the value of intellectual property rights (IPR); meanwhile, theinternational protection system of IPR has been gradually built up. The developmentof international standards for the protection of IPR has gone throw three stages: theprotection rules initially presented in the bilateral treaties or reciprocal agreement, thewidely recognized definition and protection rules of IPR, established by multilateralconventions which are under the management of World Intellectual PropertyOrganization (WIPO), the multilateral rules for the protection of IPR in the field ofinternational trade, established by the “Agreement On Trade-related Aspects ofIntellectual Property Rights”(TRIPs) under the GATT/WTO framework, includingsubstantive rules, procedure rules and dispute settlement rules.However, due to the inherent tendency towards compromise of multilateralconventions and the difficult process of negotiation and conclusion, which lasted for along time, the need of developed countries, especially the United States, Japan andother major powers to further improve international protection standards of IPR couldnot be met, therefore, they turn to the path outside the traditional WIPO, WTOmultilateral negotiating framework. Negotiated by the United States, Japan, EU,Australia and other developed countries and regions, the "Anti-Counterfeiting TradeAgreement"(ACTA) is the new development that developed countries seek todevelop new rules, beyond the TRIPs standards.Through stricter enforcement rules, for instance, expansion of third party’s civilliability in intellectual property infringement, inserting the transit goods into thescope of IPR border measures, reducing standards of intellectual propertyinfringement and other applicable rules of criminal procedure, ACTA furtherstrengthen the IPR enforcement standards in civil enforcement, border measures,criminal enforcement and enforcement of intellectual property rights in the digitalenvironment. In the ACTA negotiation process, the countries participating in the negotiations weighed the benefits and compromise on geographical indications andhuman rights issues. Meanwhile, because of overly stringent enforcement measures,ACTA has been strongly resisted by China, India, Brazil and other developingcountries in the issues of public health-related generic drugs trade. Although ACTA isnot effective so far, but international strong protection trends of IPR as well asdeveloped countries’ effort to promote the continuous development of this trenddeserve our attention.Along with the rapid growth of Chinese total international trade volume and theimplementation of national independent innovation, industrial restructuring policy,knowledge innovation are playing more important role in national economicdevelopment, China should find an appropriate balance between adapting to the levelof our economic development and integrating with the international standards ofintellectual property protection. Under the international strong protection trendrepresented by ACTA, China need to adhere to fight for the rights within traditionalWIPO and WTO multilateral negotiating framework on one hand, on the other hand,we must also seek a breakthrough outside this framework. To this end, we must makegood use of WIPO and WTO multilateral negotiating forum, unite India, Brazil andother developing countries in the new round of TRIPs negotiations to clear ourcriticism and boycott stance toward ACTA; further more, we should explicitly adoptthe TRIPs standards of intellectual property protection in the bilateral or regional freetrade agreements that China participating in, to prevent the effect of expanding use ofACTA rules in the future.