Sino, German judicial forum discusses IPR protection

BERLIN—The eighth Sino-German law symposium, which started Monday in Munich, focused on intellectual property rights (IPR) protection, Chinese diplomats said Tuesday.
The symposium was held as part of the judicial dialogue between China and Germany. Over 100 officials and scholars from both countries participated in the two-day conference. Speaking to the conference, Cao Gangtai, Director of the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council, said the Chinese government attaches great importance to IPR protection laws.
The current dialogue would play a positive role in perfecting the IPR legal system, Cao, who led the Chinese delegation to the dialogue, was quoted as saying by Chinese diplomats in Berlin. Cao also spoke highly of the cooperation and exchange between China and Germany on judicial issues, which started in 2000, noting that the move had boosted relations between the two countries at large.
German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries also addressed the conference, calling for more efforts on IPR protection from both countries. Only if IPR is properly protected, creativity could be encouraged and promoted, Zypries said.
Chinese authorities destroyed 47.18 million pornographic and illegal publications on Sunday as part of an ongoing campaign to strengthen intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. The campaign, organized by the national anti-pornography and anti-piracy office and carried out in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, marked an unprecedented number of publications destroyed in a single day.
More than 17 provinces eliminated more than 1 million pieces each, with Guangdong topping the list, destroying 12 million, or a quarter of the total.
China has attached great importance to IPR protection, which has been considered as a national strategy to help build an innovative country, said Liu Binjie, director of the National Copyright Administration.
According to official statistics, China has in the past 20 years closed down 238 pirate disc production lines, solved more than 400,000 cases of IPR infringement and confiscated more than 1.3 billion illegal publications.

—Xinhua