Registered works nationwide totaled some 184 thousand in the first four months of this year, up 67.9% on a year-to-year basis, reported from a conference to promote works registration held by the National Copyright Administration (NCAC). While the work registration system was gradually welcomed and acknowledged by copyright holders and culture and art circles, problems still exist in practice, including certificate of registration lacking standardization and information report being inconsistent.

In 2012, registered works rose by 49.05% from 2011 and surpassed 680 thousand, passing the annual increase target of 8% to 20% set in the 12^th  Five-Year Plan on Copyright and reaching ahead of schedule the goal of 600 thousand to 800 thousand works registered annually by the end of the 12th five year, said a NCAC official. This year’s work maintained the good momentum. It is found registrations in economically developed provinces significantly outnumbered those in economically underdeveloped provinces, with Beijing remaining at the top and the west lagging behind.

According to a China’s Copyright Protection Center report commissioned by NCAC, in addition to the two problems mentioned above, there are three other problems in registration practice, namely, failing to correctly identify work classification and use work classification codes, imperfect team construction in terms of information report, a few regions failing to report information on time. To solve these problems, NCAC released the Notice on Further Standardizing Work Registration Procedure in 2011 and guided China’s Copyright Protection Center to open a website of national work registration database and announcement search.
 

Work registration is still the working focus of the NCAC in 2013. The NCAC urged relevant persons in charge of the work in all local copyright offices to further enhance awareness of the importance of registration, innovate services to expand the coverage of work registration, make good use of the national work registration database platform, enhance registration staff team building and further implement the notification requirements.

It is the first time for the NCAC to hold such a special meeting. More than 60 representatives from copyright offices in provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions put forward opinions and suggestions to the problems encountered in registration practice. The meeting was co-held by Guangdong Provincial Copyright Bureau and China’s Copyright Protection Center.

(Source:IPR in China)