Remember April 10, 2007, when the US brought claims against China at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for allegedly violating the TRIPs Agreement because of unsufficient IPR enforcement (DS 362) and lack of market access (DS 363)? Read here.
Mr Jonathan Lynn reports about DS 362 for Reuters that sources at the WTO have said that China won the dispute on two counts against one brought against it by the US for its allegedly ineffective enforcement of intellectual property rights.
The interim ruling by the WTO Dispute Pannel about the US claims was as follows:
- China has not done enough to tackle counterfeiting and piracy on a commercial scale, was acknowledged by the WTO Dispute Panel;
- China's criminal code does not protect IP sufficiently, was rejected by the WTO Dispute Panel;
- Chinese customs rules allow goods that infringe IP rights to be sold rather than destroyed, the WTO Dispute Panel found on some points that the TRIPs Agreement did not apply, and on other points that the US had not established that the Chinese rules infringed the TRIPs Agreement, so it rejected this claim as well.
Read Mr Lynn's article here.
However, Reuters also reports about an anonymous US official that said exactly the opposite, read here.
So who is right? At this moment the report remains confidential. You can, however, predict who is going to win by reading the following:
The final ruling is expected in November. To be continued ...
