Chinese Judge to U.S. Firms: See You in Court : Trade: A senior jurist says Chinese law provides plenty of protection for foreign firms worried about bootlegging.
Foreign companies worried about their products being bootlegged in China should take their complaints to court rather than seek a political solution, a senior Chinese judge was quoted Thursday as saying.
The Economic Daily quoted Su Chi, chief judge at the 19-month-old Beijing Intellectual Property Court, as U.S. and Chinese negotiators tried to avert an imminent trade war over intellectual property rights.
On the second day of make-or-break talks between the two countries, the judge was quoted as saying China’s laws are strict and that every foreign firm that had taken its case to the court had received adequate protection.
“But some foreign firms are suspicious, have not taken their case to Chinese courts but have used political channels to put pressure on the government and use political means to solve a legal problem,” he was quoted as saying.
“This has made the problem more complicated and more difficult to solve,” he said.
No date has been set for an end to the talks, which could stretch right up to the Feb. 26 deadline, after which retaliatory sanctions are to take effect.
At a briefing for reporters Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Chen Jian said the United States and China hold common views on the value of intellectual property rights protection.
He blamed the current friction on Washington asking for too much.
“The fact that these differences are quite sharp is that the U.S. side has raised undue demands and requests on China’s level of IPR protection, and some of these demands far exceed China’s current state as a developing country,” Chen said.
“Some demands from the U.S. side . . . cannot be fulfilled by the Chinese side, and some of them cannot be agreed with even by the developed countries. Some of these demands, I believe, cannot even be fulfilled by the United States itself,” he said.
A U.S. spokesman declined to comment on the talks.
China and the United States announced mutual sanctions on goods worth about $1 billion after the eighth round of anti-piracy talks since last June ended Jan. 28 without agreement.
