Another Mass IPR Campaign in China: Groundhog Day All Over Again

China's Ministry of Culture announced that it has launched an IPR campaign that cracks down on counterfeit products and needs to raise awareness about IPR protection. It focuses on karaoke bars, websites, online-games, internet cares, animation and artistic products. Read the Xinhua article via People's Daily Online here. Sounds familiar As you might have already read here or here (chapter 8.3), IP Dragon is not a believer in China's mass campaigns, because:

- they are temporary (although this campaign will be quite long: half a year);

- fight symptoms not the causes;

- the are announced, so that infringers can take this into account.

However, the best part of these massive IPR campaigns were their imaginative names of these massive campaigns, such as "Operation Mountain Hawk", "Sunlight 1, 2 and 3" and my favourite "Blue-Sky". Although you would expect the Ministry of Culture to be in the best position to come up with a great name, they unfortunately called this campaign just generically campaign.

However, if the campaign has some name, please let me know. In the mean time my suggestion is "Groundhog Day All Over Again". If you have a more imaginative name, please let me know.

UPDATE November 15, 2010:

IPR Focus of IPR.gov.cn sent me a document that told me the name of the campaign:

'Special Campaign on Combating IPR Infringement and Manufacture and Sales of Counterfeit and Shoddy Commodities' and elaborated on the campaign: It includes a lot of shoulds for all involved in the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in China. It also gives a schedule of which steps will be taken:

1. Mobilisation period (October 2010): Relevant departments in different regions shall formulate detailed plans to guide implementations. Proposals drafted provincial, municipal and the central administrations shall be submitted to the Leading Group Office of the National Campaign before November 10.

2. Implementation period (November 2010 to February 2011): Relevant authorities shall take action in accordance with the Plan and the respective implementation proposals. The Leading Group Office of the National Campaign will cooperate with other relevant authorities to supervise the implementation progress in different regions. Provincial administration will conduct spot check in local areas.

3. Acceptance inspection period (March 2011): Relevant departments in different regions shall summarise the experience and lessons gained in the special campaign. The Leading Group of the National Campaign will recognise the outstanding performance of the regional departments by granting honorable titles and rewards and later report the process and achievements of the special campaign to China's State Council.

Well at least the makers of the plan are optimistic; they already know that there will be outstanding performances of the regional departments. Then again, who would not perform outstandingly, if there is honourable titles and rewards are at stake... What happened to taking pride in the work you are supposed to do?

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How Should China Spend Its Extra Yuan On IPR Enforcement?

Mr Stan Abrams of China Hearsay has another interesting article. He is criticising yet another public awareness campaign by the Chinese Ministry of Culture (MOC).
Mr Abrams writes: "Advertising, seminars and training courses arranged by MOC will have limited effect. Public education only goes so far." He suggests that it might be better to hire more cops to enforce IPR. I concur.

Public awareness campaigns, if done in a smart way, (that means something else than "a special day for the destruction of illegal audiovisual products", which will be on April 26, exactly one month from today, I cannot wait, my o my) could bring down the level of IPR infringements in the long run. But then again it is only logical that IPR enforcement will become better in the long run, because when IPR is becoming more important to Chinese companies if they develop more innovative products, that will be the point when there will be an internal pressure to the Chinese government to enforce IPR more stringently. For this we only have to be patient.

In the mean time the IPR infringements level is much too high, and the PBS (police) and other administrative enforcement authorities, in particular the National Copyright Administration of China which has only 300 (!) persons for the enforcement of copyright in the whole of China, surely need a boost (which is still an understatement).

Read Mr Abram's article here.

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