This is from the law firm’s Intellectual Property newsletter, which has been going strong now since late 1998, certainly the longest-running China IP newsletter. Anyway, the last issue contained a preachy commentary from me on a possible U.S. WTO dispute resolution against China based on TRIPs violations:

There is a certain level of comfort I experience when discussing IP enforcement in China, a feeling similar to that of a university student arguing epistemology. You know you do not have any real answers to the general problem, but since no one really expects any, you are free to expostulate at length. Every once in a while, however, things get ugly. Case in point: the U.S. may be considering a WTO dispute on the grounds that China has not fulfilled its obligations under the TRIPs Agreement (see below for more details).

Apparently out of frustration, the West is now responding to China’s IP enforcement problem with litigation, abandoning the carrot for the stick. As a diplomatic strategy, "getting tough" is in vogue these days in the trade arena. Famous U.S. gangster extraordinaire Al Capone once said: "You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone," but is dispute resolution likely to prove effective in changing China’s IP enforcement policies?

Before I get a reputation for credulousness, I should acknowledge that the threat of WTO action is probably more posturing than policy, or in words popular these days in Washington, more of a change in tactics than in strategy. Given that IP enforcement in China varies by region, by underlying IP, by administrative agency, and depending on the parties involved, however, it does not seem likely that a sharp diplomatic nudge will somehow wake a somnolent Beijing from an apparent policy stupor and magically confer upon it the ability to micromanage commerce. Like the reform of the Chinese economy itself, it will take time for IP enforcement to reach Western standards. Threats of WTO action, whether truculent posturing or a new level of invective, do not help to move forward this challenging policy discussion.

We are re-launching our website, including newlsetter archives, in the next week or so, and I will therefore hold off on a link until that happens.