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(4) Tourism service. In the new Regulations on the Administration of Travel Agenciesmade by the State Council, a new chapter titled Special Rules on Travel Agencies with Foreign Investment was added. Especially, in accordance with the new provisions, travel agencies with foreign investment are only allowed to domestic business within Mainland China and cannot do overseas business. What is worth saying here is that the Provisional regulations on Chinese-Foreign Capital Joint Venture Travel Agencies remain effective at the same time.
IV Changes of Intellectual Property Rights Laws
For the purpose of implementing TRIPS agreement, China amended many intellectual property rights (“IPRs”) laws, such as Copyright Law, Trademark Law, Patent Law and their implementation regulations, etc. Furthermore, several new regulations were made, such as Regulations on the Protection of Layout Designs of Integrated Circuits and Regulations on the Protection of Computer Software, and four old departmental rules were nullified upon WTO accession. All these efforts materialized China’s commitments on IPRs protection in Report of the Working Party on the Accession of China.As a result, a new legal structure of IPRs protection has been formed and the IPRs protection level is greatly enhanced in China.
1.Amendments of Copyright Law.
As far as in 1998, the State Council had submitted revision proposal of Copyright Law to NPC for review. After more than three years, the Standing Committee of NPC finally made amendments to Copyright Law in October 2001, two weeks before China’s WTO entry.During the legislation process, the rule-makers studied international rules, especially Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and TRIPS Agreement, China’s commitmentsand legislations of many countries; thus the final amendments to Copyright Law were quite consistent with China’s international obligations.
The main features of the amendments may be summarized as following:
(1) The scope of subjects under protection was expandedand more classifications of IPRs were stipulated . In accordance with Copyright Law, acrobatics, architecture, databases and collections, whose arrangements or choices of content are original, are within the protection scope. Article 10 prescribes the thirteen kinds of property rights based on copyright. In the former copyright law, only ten kinds were stipulated.
(2) The scope of neighboring rights was broader than before and the categories were expatiated in Articles such as 15，35, 37, 38 and 44 of the new law. One can read in the Report of the Working Party on the Accession of China that members noted the need to clarify the rights of performers and producers to bring them into conformity with the requirements of Article 14 of TRIPS Agreement . These articles in Copyright Law fully responded to these concerns of WTO members.
(3) The strengthening of law enforcement was made. In the new law, provisions on the suspension of related infringement acts and the provisional measures of the perseverance of property and evidences against alleged infringements were added . Also the administrative sanctions against infringing activities causing damage to public interests were aggravated . The effective and powerful implementation of Copyright Law has been a heated issue between China and many other countries (especially the USA) for a long time. During the WTO entry negotiation, some developed countries (such as USA, EU and Australia) also raised the implementation issue. After the amendments, new provisions will undoubtedly strengthen the power of enforcing agencies in dealing with copyright infringement and the government hope the existing level of copyright piracy will be reduced considerably.
2.Amendments of Trademark Law
Trademark Law came into force on March 1, 1983 and was amended in 1993 first time. With the development of domestic economy and the further implementation of international obligations on trademark protection, the legislative and enforcement departments of China realized that the former law fell somewhat short of fulfilling the requirements of TRIPS and the Paris Convention in a few aspects and started to amend the former trademark law in 1999. This was the second revision to it. The amendment bill was approved by the Standing Committee of NPC on October 27, 2001 and come into effect as of December 1. The government believes that, the second amendment, which was based on TRIPS and Paris Convention, made the current trademark law in full conformity with China’s commitmentsand requirement of TRIPS.
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