On the existing problems and countermeasures of my country’s intellectual property protection in international trade

[Abstract] In the process of economic globalization, intellectual property protection has become the most important issue in international trade. one. Intellectual property trade accounts for an increasing proportion of international trade and plays a more significant role. With China's accession to the WTO, it is important to attach importance to and strengthen the protection of my country's intellectual property rights and cultivate national awareness of intellectual property rights, which is crucial to the health, stability and sustainable development of our country. International trade has important practical significance. This article starts from the relationship between intellectual property theory and international trade, focuses on analyzing the current situation and existing problems of intellectual property rights in my country, and proposes countermeasures for intellectual property protection from the strategic perspective of the country and enterprises.

[Keywords] Intellectual property protection strategy

Intellectual property rights mainly refer to the exclusive rights enjoyed by individuals and their organizations in accordance with the law for the intellectual achievements created and completed through mental work. It has the characteristics of intangibility, duality, confirmation and exclusivity. According to the relevant legal provisions of my country's intellectual property law, the intellectual property rights enjoyed by citizens and legal persons include copyright (copyright), patent rights, trademark rights, discovery rights, invention rights, and other scientific and technological achievement rights. Intellectual property protection is very important in today's knowledge economy and society. It not only encourages inventions and innovative knowledge, but also introduces advanced technology and funds, accelerates the allocation of technological innovation resources, and promotes the commercialization and industrialization of new technologies. This article starts from the relationship between intellectual property theory and international trade, focuses on analyzing the current situation and existing problems of intellectual property rights in my country, and proposes countermeasures for intellectual property protection from the strategic perspective of the country and enterprises.

1. The relationship between intellectual property protection and international trade

Intellectual property protection is a reflection of international and international economic relations based on knowledge, and is an inevitable product of the development of the new economy; According to Marx's theory of surplus value, only the production of material materials can produce surplus value, and intellectual property as a non-material economy itself does not produce surplus value. Only participation in the value division of the material production sector can produce value. In the process of international trade, some developed capitalist countries have lowered product prices in the material sector and raised prices in non-material economic sectors related to knowledge, thereby gaining a more favorable position in international trade. With the continuous development of international trade, the status of intellectual property rights in international trade is becoming more and more important. Internationally, intellectual property rights are compared with trade in goods and trade in services, and its importance is evident. In 1994, during the Tenth Round of Uruguay negotiations of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) was formed; in 1995, the WTO was established. The TRIPS Agreement came into effect at the same time. When my country joined the WTO in 2001, the TRIPS Agreement has certainly become an important criterion for my country's intellectual property protection. Intellectual property protection will have an important impact on international trade.

1. Paying attention to the protection of intellectual property rights is conducive to the healthy development of my country's foreign trade

As we all know, foreign trade is the engine of economic growth. With the development of international trade, the knowledge content and technical content of goods and services are getting higher and higher, among which goods involving intellectual property rights account for a large proportion, and this proportion is still rising. Since the reform and opening up, the reason why our country has been able to successfully introduce a large amount of foreign investment and advanced foreign technology relies largely on the establishment and implementation of the intellectual property rights system in our country, which has laid a basic guarantee system for normal international trade activities and investment activities. . Only in a good intellectual property protection environment can international trade and investment develop effectively.

2. The adverse impact of intellectual property protection on developing countries

In Vernon’s product life cycle theory, generally speaking, a country’s industry will experience the following four Stage: The first stage is to create new products and enter the domestic market; the second stage is to saturate the domestic market and export to foreign markets; the third stage is to invest abroad and provide products to foreign markets; the fourth stage is to produce foreign products and supply them to the home country market. exit.

From the perspective of developed countries, when it is in the second and third stages of the product cycle, it will strongly support free trade; and when it reaches the fourth stage, when the products in the domestic market are replaced by imported products, the market position of the country's products begins declined and its market share was challenged. At this time, it will turn to intellectual property protection, and will vigorously link it to intellectual property protection in trade policies, and implement strict intellectual property protection through mandatory measures to try to slow down the pace of the product cycle. This is undoubtedly unfair to developing countries that are relatively backward in technology. Such protection of intellectual property rights has undoubtedly widened the gap between developed and developing countries, and the gap between rich and poor has become increasingly serious.

2. The current problems faced by my country in the protection of intellectual property rights in international trade

Our country is the largest developing country in the world. As the world enters the era of economic globalization and China joins After the WTO, the Chinese government established and formulated relevant legal systems for intellectual property protection and achieved results recognized by countries around the world. However, our society is still in its infancy, and the market economy system has yet to be improved. In international trade, our country still has some problems that need to be solved in terms of intellectual property protection.

1. Awareness of intellectual property protection is relatively weak

Enterprises have a weak awareness of intellectual property protection. Chinese enterprises obtain tens of thousands of major scientific and technological achievements at the provincial and ministerial level or above every year. However, when applying for However, the number of patents is less than 10%. Enterprises pay more attention to the protection of tangible assets, but ignore the protection of intangible assets. As a result, many intellectual property rights are "squatting" in our country every year. Therefore, enhancing the awareness of intellectual property protection has become the common sense of entrepreneurs, and strengthening the legal protection of corporate intellectual property has become the "motivating force" and "watershed" for corporate development. At present, our country lacks an effective intellectual property protection mechanism. Intellectual property protection involves many aspects, including legal, political, economic, cultural and other fields. For example, the Shanxi Mature Vinegar trade secrets were leaked; cloisonne, rice paper and other national special skills were leaked, and a large number of well-known domestic trademarks were registered abroad. Therefore, when vigorously protecting foreign well-known trademarks, we should strengthen the support and protection of domestic well-known trademarks.

2. Lack of intellectual property talents

Most domestic enterprises have not yet established intellectual property management departments, and there are no personnel specifically responsible for intellectual property work. There are not many talents who truly understand and understand intellectual property knowledge. many. If a company is involved in an intellectual property dispute, it will either be in an extremely passive position or have to pay high fees to hire external personnel to respond to the lawsuit. Some highly professional tasks include patent application, trademark registration, property rights negotiation and analysis work, but no one is competent due to the lack of professional talents.

3. Laws related to intellectual property protection need to be improved urgently

Some laws in our country are still very different from TRIPS-related laws and even have many gaps. Intellectual property is a legal monopoly granted by law. Some multinational companies attempt to use illegal restrictions and exclusion of competition in intellectual property rights to achieve their monopoly status. Many developed countries have enacted anti-monopoly laws to restrict illegal monopoly behaviors that abuse intellectual property rights. However, my country has not yet promulgated an anti-monopoly law, and there are no operable anti-monopoly provisions in intellectual property protection laws. In this way, Chinese enterprises may encounter an unfavorable passive state when encountering intellectual property disputes, and thus be helpless against the monopolistic behavior of other enterprises in the domestic market, and encounter strict anti-monopoly law control in foreign markets, putting themselves in an embarrassing situation. .

3. my country’s Countermeasures to Strengthen Intellectual Property Protection

In the process of international trade, all countries attach great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights and have formulated effective legal protection systems to protect own economic interests. For our country, intellectual property protection is a wide-ranging systematic project. Although our government has also formulated relevant legal systems in this regard, it still takes a process for the national consciousness to truly pay attention to intellectual property issues. At present, the following work should be done:

1. Implement the national intellectual property protection strategy

(1) Policy tilt and financial support. Policies must shift from general support to focused support for patent projects, especially those high-tech patent projects, and build high-tech national industrial groups with my country's independent intellectual property rights. At the same time, effective measures will be taken to ensure the realization of various rewards and rewards in the patent system, and heavy rewards will be given to some major invention patented technologies.

In terms of funding, in the face of the new situation after joining the WTO, governments at all levels should establish patent funds, with finance and enterprises as the main bodies, open up a wide range of funding sources, and raise funds through multiple channels and forms. Focus on supporting patented technologies with broad market prospects, high technical content, and high added value, such as the Torch Plan, Spark Plan, high-tech industrialization, technological transformation projects, new product development projects and other scientific and technological and economic planning projects.

(2) Strengthen legislation and improve laws. The formulation of intellectual property laws and regulations should be aimed at encouraging innovation and optimizing the environment, and further forming an intellectual property laws and regulations system that is both in line with international standards and in line with my country's national conditions. Efforts should be made to revise and improve the Patent Law, Trademark Law, and Copyright Law, as well as legislation on copyright protection measures for folk literary and artistic works, protection of genetic resources, and traditional knowledge. At the same time, we will further improve administrative law enforcement procedures and resolve intellectual property disputes fairly and efficiently in accordance with the law. Actively bring into play the role of cross-departmental law enforcement cooperation mechanisms and regional collaborative law enforcement mechanisms to combat and prevent group infringements and repeated infringements. Consolidate the joint supervision system for major intellectual property cases and the communication and dialogue mechanism with foreign governments and international organizations. Strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights in various exhibitions such as the "Olympic Games" and "World Expo". Improve the level of intellectual property protection in my country's agricultural technology, agricultural tools, pesticides and fertilizers and other fields, and promote the construction of a new socialist countryside. Strengthen judicial protection of intellectual property rights, conscientiously implement judicial interpretations of intellectual property rights, and investigate criminal liability for criminal violations of intellectual property rights in accordance with the law.

(3) Pay attention to talents and cultivate talents. Science and technology are people-oriented, and talents are the country’s first resource. Competition between countries is actually a competition for talents. Whoever has more talents will gain an advantage in the competition and win. In recent years, multinational companies have increased their competition for local talents in China. If Chinese companies do not pay more attention to talents, they will lose the source of power for their future development. At the same time, companies should also speed up the deepening of their own talent systems and structures. Change and cultivate your own talent team. It is necessary to carry out the training of talent teams through multiple channels and at multiple levels, especially to increase the intensity of cultivating high-level talents in intellectual property work, comprehensively improve the level of intellectual property work, and create a large-scale team including various professional talents and management talents. intellectual property team. Continue to strengthen intellectual property publicity and training for government leaders at all levels and heads of enterprises and institutions.

(4) Highlight characteristics and learn from experience. Economic development has its own characteristics, and the protection of intellectual property rights should also have its own characteristics. There must be strategic priorities and directions for intellectual property protection that are consistent with national and regional characteristics. In recent years, the United States has made combating piracy a focus of intellectual property protection, with media piracy being a top priority. At the same time, they are improving U.S. intellectual property regulations—especially criminal penalties—in line with modern standards, including revising and updating the two-way judicial assistance and extradition treaties signed by the United States, so that pirates and counterfeiters are punished by law in the United States.

Our country should also focus on seeking joint protection of traditional knowledge resources. When developed countries have basically completed the "enclosure movement" of global modern industrial intellectual property rights, our "traditional knowledge" has become the new target of the enclosure movement in the new century. China should actively use the current intellectual property legal mechanism to protect traditional knowledge resources and actively seek international joint group-style protection.

2. Implement corporate intellectual property protection strategy

(1) Establish a brand and enhance awareness. In the era of knowledge economy, the "name" of a brand increasingly lies in the high knowledge content of its products. Enterprises should maintain the advantage of their products in knowledge content to seek competitive advantages of their products. Only when enterprises master excellent intellectual property rights can they compete in the market. Only by launching a well-known national brand can we have a place in the international market; with our own well-known national brand, we should establish brand protection awareness, gain insight into the brand strategies used by multinational groups in our country, and use the internationalization of brands to drive knowledge Property Rights Strategy. We must not only make use of domestic resource conditions and markets, but also make full use of foreign resources and markets to conduct transnational operations and develop our brand into a global brand. Because some enterprises in our country had no awareness of trademark protection in the early years, a large number of well-known domestic trademarks were registered abroad, such as "Tong Ren Tang" and "Tsingtao Beer", etc., which caused many obstacles to the development of these enterprises abroad. Therefore, we must Learn these lessons and always pay attention to the protection of your well-known trademarks. Otherwise, it is tantamount to stifling the development of enterprises abroad.

(2) Strengthen applications and promote protection. According to reports, the total economic compensation incurred by Chinese enterprises due to intellectual property disputes has exceeded 1 billion US dollars since China's accession to the WTO. Therefore, we should implement patent protection strategies from multiple angles and three-dimensionally. Implementing patent protection strategies as a talisman for enterprise development has become a top priority for Chinese enterprises.

First, set up a specialized intellectual property agency, establish a patent information center to collect information, build an intellectual property protection network, and use the patent information center to classify and manage patents related to the company's products. According to statistics from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), more than 90% of new technology inventions and creations are retrieved in patent documents every year, so we can constantly update our patent database, investigate similar technologies, and conduct professional reviews Conduct infringement analysis on relevant content, so that the company's R&D personnel can understand the technological development trends of the industry, provide directions for innovative projects, and maintain the legitimacy of research and development if it does not constitute infringement.

Second, increase the patent application rate and set up a patent network strategy. Apply for a patent for every innovative solution, and set up a large number of different rights with basically the same principles around the basic patent, and technology development is inherently a process of continuous upgrading, so when an enterprise has its own independent patent rights, it should The patent protection scope of the mesh is obtained through continuous improvement of the original technology.

(3) Increase innovation and improve efficiency. To implement corporate intellectual property strategy, we must accelerate the establishment of corporate technological innovation systems, increase the output of intellectual property, and form the dominant position of enterprises in technological innovation and scientific and technological investment. First, we must establish the concept of intellectual property in the process of enterprise technological innovation, make full use of intellectual property documents, and pay attention to the discovery, declaration and formation of intellectual property rights; second, we must strengthen the construction of enterprise technology centers and make the technology center a center for new products, new technology development and intellectual property rights. The carrier of strategy implementation has become a platform to attract and gather scientific and technological talents, mobilize and exert their enthusiasm and creativity; thirdly, we must strengthen industry-university-research cooperation, and in accordance with the principle of “maximum sharing of benefits and maximum risk sharing”, Develop new products and new technologies, establish research institutes and laboratories, and jointly cultivate technical talents.

References:

[1] Tian Xiaojing: Intellectual Property Friction and Countermeasures of Chinese Enterprises in International Trade [J]. Journal of Gansu Economic and Management Cadre College, 2007 (1 )

[2] Li Ben, Liu Luyao and Lu Peng on: The abuse of intellectual property rights in international trade under the WTO framework [J]. Shopping mall modernization, 2007 (1)

[ 3] Ding Yonggang and Zhang Haipeng: Analysis of existing problems and countermeasures in my country’s intellectual property protection in international trade [J]. Shopping Mall Modernization, 2007 (5)

Other related literature:

1. "Intellectual Property and International Competition" China Science and Technology for Development Research Center China Finance and Economics Press

2. "China: Facing International Economic Friction" Liu Li Encyclopedia of China Press

3. "Research on Intellectual Property Academic Frontier Issues" Nanzhenxing China Book Publishing House

4. "Control the Market Economy with Systems and Orders" by Hong Yinxing People's Publishing House

5. Research on WTO and Local Administrative Management System" edited by Tang Minhao, Shanghai People's Publishing House

6. "Problems and Countermeasures in my country's Intellectual Property Trade" Li Hao, "International Trade Issues" 2005/11

7. "Intellectual Property Protection: Chinese Leap" Liu Yong, "International Technology Trade" 2005/3 Issue

8. "Research on the Intellectual Property Strategy of Multinational Groups in China" Lu Wenju, "International Technology Trade" 2005 /Issue 4

9. "The Application of Western Learning in Intellectual Property Protection" "International Technology Trade" 2006/1 Issue

10. "Several Issues in China's Intellectual Property Strategy" Zheng Chengsi "Xinhua Digest" Issue 15, 2006

11. "Intellectual Property Rights - A Barrier for Private Enterprises to Export" Xia Ruilin, "Foreign Economic and Trade Practice" 2004/6

12. "Establishing a Big Suggestions on the Early Warning Mechanism for Technical Standards of Major Export Commodities" Jiang Rong, "Foreign Economic and Trade Practices" 2003/9

13. "The Establishment and Improvement of the Early Warning Mechanism for Technical Barriers for Major Export Commodities in Guangzhou" Jiang Rong et al. "World Standardization and Quality Management》2004/11