On May 20, Chinalabs.com, a consulting and research company, issued an annual report on China's software piracy rate in 2012. In terms of the quantity of software installed, the software piracy rate reached 11.8%, similar to that of 2011；in terms of the quantity of software installed that requires payment, the rate dropped from 38 percent in 2011 to 36 percent last year, according to the report released by the company, entrusted by the SIPO.

According to Wang Weihua, in charge of the report, the piracy rate all declined in different fields. As for categories, information security software declined the most--from 39 percent in 2011 to 36 percent last year--followed by office software piracy which dropped from 55 percent to 53 percent and operating system piracy from 24 percent to 23 percent.

According to the report, in 2012 the number of software installed in single PC rose from 6.05 in 2011 to 6.7 units, an increase of 10.7 percent, in which the softwares that required payment increased from 1.9 to 2.22 units, up 16.8 percent, The  free softwares rose from 4.15 to 4.48 units, an increase of 8 percent. The pirated software increased from 0.71 to 0.79 units, up 11 percent, lower than that of licensed software.

The report provided five suggestions to battle piracy, that are, to solve the problem of regional imbalance of licensed software, to attach importance to the promotion of legitimate software to rural areas, to support domestic software enterprises, to protect consumers' interests in the process of software pricing and upgrading, and to respond to international public opinion in scientific methods.

(Source: China IP News)