In a stepped-up fight against piracy, China's courts sent almost three thousand people to jail for violating intellectual property rights (IPR) last year.

Courts handled 3,567 criminal cases and 16,583 civil cases involving IPR violations last year, Sun Huapu, spokesman of the Supreme People's Court, said at a press conference held on Friday.

Over 65 percent of the civil IPR cases, which mainly involve companies suing other companies, were heard in courts in the wealthy and developed regions of Guangdong, Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong and Shanghai.

Sun said 5,336 people were punished for IPR violations, up 30.66 percent from the year before and 2,963 were imprisoned, an increase of 23.9 percent.

"Courts all over China paid close attention to piracy trials last year by timely punishing IPR violators and raising compensation amounts," Sun said, adding that efforts to stamp out piracy have been enhanced.

Foreign press and lawmakers have accused China of its slack action to fight piracy as fake labelled clothes, handbags, watches and DVDs keep coming out on streets of nearly every big cities across the country.

The issue of intellectual property rights has become a major stumbling block in China-U.S. relations, said Zhang Zhipei, Chief Justice of the Intellectual Property Rights Tribunal. "Foreign companies complained a lot, but few took legal action."

Zhang urged foreign companies to take China's violators to court promptly, saying that last year only 5 percent of the total IPR litigations came from foreign companies or personnel.

"As IPR judges, we are anxious about the situation but without foreign companies filing a lawsuit, judges can do nothing about it," Zhang said.

Jiang said it was important to protect the rights of foreigners as China needs funds and technology from Western countries for its development.

"Chinese courts will protect the rights of foreign companies if they can provide evidence and sue their rights violators in courts," he said.

China's courts lowered the threshold for prosecutions of piracy cases at the end of 2004. Individuals who sell more than 5,000 pirated discs can be imprisoned for three to seven years.

Sun said there were 1,117 cases involved manufacturing and sale of fake goods and 1,926 cases involved illegal business operations.

"These were not handled as IPR infringement cases because they involved other crimes that resulted in more severe penalties," Zhang said.

Ren Weihua, Chief Justice of the No.2 Criminal Court under the SPC, said the rise of criminal IPR cases and the people punished was mainly due to the lowering of the threshold and enhanced law enforcement.

The Ministry of Commerce on Wednesday announced a plan to guide the country's IPR protection effort. The plan covers trademarks, copyrights, patent and import and export sectors.

In accordance with the plan, China will draft, stipulate and revise 17 laws and regulations on these sectors in 2006.

Source: Xinhua