The SIPO's Deputy Director Bao Hong (third left), China Daily's Deputy Editor-in-Chief Huang Qing (four left) and other VIP delegates attended the opening ceremony for the IPR channel at China Daily website on Tuesday, January 18, in Beijing. (Photo by Zhang Wei, China Daily)

In addition to the print edition, China Daily readers now have another source for intensive coverage of intellectual property (IP) on the newspaper's website at ipr.chinadaily.com.cn.

Officially launched on Jan 18, the site is co-sponsored by China IP Magazine.

To mark the launch, an opening ceremony hosted more than 100 government officials and representatives of leading enterprises, IP management associations, colleges, research institutions, and international organizations.

"There are misunderstandings and bias in some countries and regions toward China's IP status in the world," Huang Qing, China Daily deputy editor-in-chief, said at the ceremony."

"Due to the lack of a convenient communication channel, they are not seeing the efforts made in IP protection and the achievements gained in recent years.

"China Daily's IP website is created to deliver it," she said. "Together with the IP special in the newspaper, it will show the world the trends, interviews, government attitudes and big news events in China's IP field."

Li Lei, a manager at the headquarters of the Unitalen law firm in Beijing, said he is "excited about the launch of the site".

"Many of our foreign clients are eager to know about the latest in IP, so we started to provide them with monthly English reports on Chinese IP cases, but it's not enough."

"Now we can recommend this informative channel to them and it will be very helpful," he said.

The China IP Annual Forum was held on the same day as the launch of the website with a theme of battling piracy and counterfeits while developing innovation.

Former Chief Judge of the IP Division of the Supreme People's Court Jiang Zhipei said at the forum that the nation should establish an IP Court of Appeals in Beijing because "such disputes have skyrocketed in recent years, which is a huge challenge for the IP division to handle, even though the division is the largest in the supreme court with some 70 law enforcement officials".

Li Changxu, director of the China United Intellectual Property Protection Center - one of the earliest firms specializing in IP enforcement and investigation on the mainland - noted the challenges for law enforcement.

"The trade in pirated products is no longer limited to traditional markets such as Silk Street, which are easy to find and fight against," Li said. "The outlets now are much more abundant, such as trading on the Internet, which is hard to supervise."

He said he hoped government officials will undertake a long-term crackdown instead of special raids lasting only several months.

Source: China Daily