China Bristles at U.S. WTO Piracy Cases

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 24, 2007 - 10:08am.

Beijing - China has warned that U.S. complaints to the World Trade Organization (WTO) regarding the nation's control on piracy will harm relations between the two nations, Reuters reported.

The U.S. filed complaints at the WTO earlier this month, accusing China of not doing enough to clamp down on piracy of intellectual property.

"This will have an utterly negative impact and will inevitably badly damage bilateral intellectual property cooperation," Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi told Reuters, adding that the U.S. action "flies in the face of the agreement between the two countries' leaders to propose dialogue as a way of settling disputes."

While China said it will implement 14 new laws on intellectual property rights and usage, and touted other enforcement efforts, the statements come as DVDs appearing to be copies of "Spider-Man 3" surfaced on the streets of Beijing -- nearly two weeks prior to its official theatrical release, Reuters reported.

Update: Sony said in a statement on Wednesday that the "Spider-Man 3" DVD boxes appearing in China are fakes, and that so far no pirated copies of the film have turned up either on DVD or on the Internet.

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/37t7ff (Reuters)

http://tinyurl.com/3aafcq (Reuters)

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