This summer's nationwide intellectual property rights (IPR) campaign was launched in Beijing on Sunday, sponsored by eight government departments including the National Anti-pornography Working Group, the Ministry of Culture, the Press and Publication Administration and the General Administration of Customs.

"We only have a history of some 20 years in IPR protection so many people are still not acquainted with the concept of IPR," said Zhang Qin, deputy director of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO). “To enable them to understand IPR in a very short period of time is a hard task."

According to Liu Binjie, deputy head of the national work team on pornographic and illegal publications, the campaign will run in 13 cities, including Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Nanjing, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenyang and Laizhou, from June 20 to August 31.

Liu said the aim is to crack more IPR infringement cases and investigate distribution networks and production bases of pirated products.

Despite much progress in the past few years, Liu said the country still faces a "stark" situation in combating counterfeiters as numbers of pirated DVDs keep increasing.

Counterfeiters have become increasingly sophisticated and are building their own brands by expanding production and sales networks, he said, adding that "IPR protection and cracking pirated audiovisual product cases have become ever more important."

Zhang acknowledged that China faced a difficult task trying to improve IPR protection and that the biggest challenge was weak public awareness, according to a white paper released two months ago.

The government will work very hard to increase public awareness, Zhang said. "Economic growth requires innovation and invention. That means IPR protection is prerequisite."

Liu said the government will try to improve international cooperation and enhance social education on the importance of IPR protection, and the public can report piracy cases on the phone to the work team or the Ministry of Public Security or through the work team's website.

Liu said 229 million illegal publications were seized in 2004, 93 percent of which were counterfeit. Of them, 175 million were audiovisual products, followed by over 24 million books and nearly 14 million electronic publications and software.

In last year's IPR campaign, 690,000 markets and stores were inspected and more than 40,000 closed for distributing illegal publications, including 12 million pornographic publications and 21 pirated CD/DVD production lines.

In the decade from 1994, police confiscated more than 800 million pirated audiovisual products and shut down 200 DVD production lines, and approximately 40 million yuan (US$4.8 million)

(Xinhua News Agency June 20, 2005)