From Trips To Acta

From the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Right (TRIPS) in1994, to the USA’s WTO complaint against China over the protection of intellectual property in2007, to Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which was opened for signature in2011, it seems that the developed nations especially the USA have never slowed down the speed in perusing a high standard of intellectual property protection.Compared to the TRIPS agreement, ACTA has lower criminal threshold in intellectual property crimes and severer criminal measures. It is not difficult to find that the ACTA agreement is seriously influenced by the USA legislation. It is a trend that criminal copyright enforcement measures are likely to become increasingly stringent in international agreement. Nevertheless, we have no responsibility to sign this agreement, given the fact that there exist defects on the basic theory about the criminalization of copyright infringement and the lower copyright crimes threshold may pose threat on our own legal system. At the meantime, we need to promote the innovation on both culture and technology products. Only if China becomes a powerful country in both culture and technology, China could get rid of the negative influences of high standard intellectual property protection treaties such ACTA.Four chapters are included in his thesis:The first chapter focuses on the theories of the criminalization on copyright infringement, including positive and negative aspects. The second chapter introduces the development of the USA copyright crimes legislation and analyzes the reasons behind the increasingly stringent criminal copyright enforcement measures. The main content of the third chapter is the criminal copyright enforcement measures in international treaties. The fourth chapter makes a comparison among the Chinese laws, TRIPS and ACTA. The conclusion is that china’s laws concerning the criminal copyright measures comply with the requirements in TRIPS, whereas ACTA can pose a substantial threat to our legal system. We need to be aware that we have no responsibility to sign ACTA, but in the long term emphasis should be put on the innovation of technology and culture.