China must prove it can police those who are infringing on U.S. copyrights and trademarks, before the United States supports its admittance into the World Trade Organization (WTO), says Professor Doris E. Long of The John Marshall Law School, Chicago.
“To realize the potential of China, the United States must remain committed to a position of engagement and dialogue,” she argues. “In China, ‘saving face’ matters. As the U.S. greets Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, Americans must remember that the U.S. too has ‘face’ that is never served by abandoning its ideals.”
Long, an expert in international intellectual property law has lectured Chinese business and law students last year as a Fulbright Scholar at Jiao Tung University in Shanghai.
“Counterfeit software, music CDs and movies on video discs are readily available, even in the poshest department stores in Beijing and Shanghai,” Long found during her 1998 stay and other trips to the People’s Republic of China, including Tibet. “Such lax enforcement dulls the promise of the potentially large Chinese market for consumer goods, and makes foreign traders and investors wary.”
More than 110 countries share U.S. concern, Long says. They are the signers of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which spells out the price of admission to the WTO, namely compliance with its intellectual property enforcement standards.
It’s a matter of money, Long says. “Given China’s focus on technology as the engine to fuel its economy, when rule of law issues collide with economic development goals, the loser is often the foreign intellectual property owner,” Long asserts.
Long specialized in the areas of intellectual property, unfair competition and computer law as a Washington IP attorney. For 14 years, she represented artists, musicians, scientists and engineers for the firms of Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn and Howrey & Simon.
More recently, she has trained intellectual property enforcement officials in former Soviet Union nations under the auspices of the Federal Judicial Center. As a John Marshall professor, she has also taught representatives from China’s patent office, who come to the U.S. to attend a six-month training program run by The John Marshall Law School’s Center for Intellectual Property Law.
