Chinese and foreign experts warned against the abuse of intellectual property rights (IPR) recently.

They expressed their common concern about this issue in Shanghai on November 10 at an international forum for fair competition and market economy.

They defined the IPR abuse as an unfair competition committed by holders of an IPR who injure the interests of either other parties or the public by abusing their legitimate rights.

Professor Wang Xianlin from Law School of Anhui University said that multinationals enjoyed overwhelming advantages on IPR as a result of their generous investment in R&D. This puts teeth of law into their tentative predominance on the market.

As it is learned IPR abuses have been rising in China. Some multinationals holding core IPR tout their products with bundling marketing. Some take the advantage of their dominate position on the market by overcharging customers. And there are cases in which IPR holders refuse to license their technology to their competitors even under reasonable terms so that their monopoly can be secured.

An official from European Commission recognized the difficulty in probing into IPR abuses. A new rule of EC prohibits any terms hindering competition, such as fixed prices, limited output, divided market or segmented consumer groups.

In some African countries, the cocktail treatment is excluded from IPR protection and replicas are allowed so that the cure is accessible and affordable for AIDS patients.

The absence of laws governing the application of IPR in China has led to the failure of fighting against IPR abuses. The alliance of DVD patents holders is a typical example.

Experts urged to improve the IPR protection on one hand and put a complete Anti-Trust Law in place on the hand. Special articles should be devised in the law so that monopolies involving IPR abuses are subject to penalties.

China has been a WTO member for three years. On November 11, Cao Jianming, Vice President of the Supreme People��s Court, vowed to beef up the legal protection of intellectual property rights to have IPR infringements face punishment which is harsh enough to outbid mileages of such misbehaviors.

In recent years, IPR cases have been rising in China. In 2003, 9271 IPR cases were filed to local courts which was 18.86 percent higher than the previous year. And the first half of this year saw a jump of 25.42 percent over the same period of last year. Experts think this trend will maintain in a certain period to come.

Cases involving infringements of copyrights, patents and trademarks are all growing. Developed areas such as Beijing and Guangdong always record spiraling up of such cases in particular. And the number of such cases is increasing faster than ever in the country��s mid-west.

There are special IPR tribunals at intermediate courts where excellent judges deal with a lot of IPR cases all in accordance with the law. Many of these cases have significant influence on the society.

However, judges find they have to encounter with increasing new problems when they deal with IPR cases. These cases have covered all fields mentioned in the Agreement on Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreed by WTO members. This poses a challenge to the application of the law. So it is necessary to improve the quality and efficiency of the judicial process.

Xiao Yang, President of the Supreme People��s Court required recently that courts and IPR judges take effective measures to improve their performance of their responsibilities.

By People's Daily Online