For those fighting the uphill battle against property infringement in China, one word is key: education, education, education.

As World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) senior official Mpazi Sinjela sees it, education might offer the key to eradicate intellectual property right (IPR) violations and fundamentally address IPR issues.

"Education is the No 1 component for a country's successful IPR policy implementation," he says. "If IPR education is ignored, the policy that governments have set up will simply not function because of the lack of proper human resources."

Sinjela compared the role of education in IPR protection to that of a pilot in an airplane. "You can create a plane. But if there's no pilot, then what's the use of the plane?"

Authorities in China seem to agree. Recently, plans are being laid to introduce IPR education at primary schools across the country; universities and colleges such as Fudan University in Shanghai and Peking University have set up centres for IPR research; law schools are offering comprehensive IPR education programmes.

"I was quite impressed by the curriculum, collection of literature on IPR, and the sight of a large number of students sitting in the library and studying the topic," Sinjela says. He paid a visit to Peking University two years ago and met school heads of Central South University in Hunan Province recently.

More to be done

But as the dean of WIPO's Worldwide Academy, founded in March 1998 in response to demand for knowledge and skills in intellectual property, Sinjela saw that more things could be done in China, such as expanding education for the sake of better protecting IPR.

The academy already has programmes catering to different target audiences, including inventors and creators, business managers and IP professionals, policy makers and government officials of IP institutions, diplomats and representatives, students and teachers of intellectual property and the civil society, Sinjela says.

Its objectives are achieved through five core programmes of professional training, distance learning, policy development, teaching and research.

Currently, the academy's co-operation with China's State Intellectual Property Office mainly focuses on distance learning even though all five programmes have been included.

It's important to target a large group of people, says Sinjela.

"You can train all the specialists in intellectual property offices," he says of their policy development programme. "But if decision-makers in governments, policy advisors, law-enforcement officials, judges and customs officials don't have a clue about IPR knowledge, those specialists will not be able to meet the challenges."

He says their projects help decision-makers create a supportive environment for intellectual workers to come up with better policies and laws because they understand intellectual property.

But, as the dean sees it, chief executive officers, especially in small- and medium-sized enterprises in China, need to know and be educated about intellectual property, and tailor-made programmes are urgently needed.

"Most owners of small- and medium-sized enterprises in China don't know anything about IPR and some are afraid to even think about it," Sinjela says.

Reaching rural areas

In the less developed hinterland of China, CEOs' awareness of IPR is particularly scant.

According to the latest figures released by the intellectual property office of Central China's Hunan Province, about 90 per cent of the firms in Hunan never filed a patent and 40 per cent of them don't have a filed trademark.

In 2005, the province had roughly 8,700 new patents in the country, with only 1,800 obtained by enterprises. The number is even smaller than the amount of patents filed by a single company in East or South China, such as appliance making giant Haier Group and telecommunications networks provider Huawei Technologies.

"For developing countries like China, it's important to know how to brand the product using IPR knowledge and how to add value to creations, just to be able to compete with developed country's industries," Sinjela says.

"If companies don't have IPR policies, they will lose millions of dollars by not protecting their intellectual property," he warns.

He says the academy is evaluating the possibility to bring tailor-made executive courses to emerging economies such as China.

A native of Zambia, Sinjela also saw that education could help resolve some thorny problems.

One of the headaches that plagues China and many other countries is that quite a few young people, especially college students, are becoming major consumers of pirated video-audio products and download free music illegally from the Internet simply because they can't afford licensed products.

"This is a major problem for many, many countries," Sinjela says.

But he was quick to add that just because a country is poor doesn't mean its citizens can "steal" other people's property.

"I can understand that someone steal a bread because they are hungry and have no money to buy food," he says. "But this is music, this is DVDs."

In the long run, he says, if people are allowed to have a free ride on other people's creative works, the talented creators will suffer.

But if creative works are protected, the talented individuals in China will make money and jobs will be created; those who are unemployed and poor may even benefit from the system.

"We must break the vicious cycle, and begin to move forward," he says. "We need to educate and discourage (pirated goods)."

Source: China Daily