Peggy Sito

Foreign companies will enjoy better protection of their intellectual property rights in China as the government introduces new regulations to comply with World Trade Organisation requirements, according to a Hong Kong law firm.

Ho Ling, a consultant at Clifford Chance's intellectual property rights division, said the central government had been making great efforts to tackle the infringement problems in the past few years.

Foreign firms have long complained of infringements of technology, trademarks and copyrights by mainland companies.

The latest lawsuit was filed by Toyota, which accused China's Geely Group of infringing its copyright. The Japanese carmaker is demanding 14 million yuan (HK$13.2 million) from Geely.

Ms Ho said China already had a number of rules to protect intellectual property rights, but it was difficult to implement them.

'The country is big and people in different regions have different cultures. It is hard to implement new rules across China,' Ms Ho said.

But the situation was improving, she said. For example, the regional Industry and Commerce Administration would take action within two days of receiving complaints of pirated goods. 'It would have taken much longer in the past,' she said.

Ms Ho said the new technology import rules, introduced on January 1 last year, helped speed up the licensing procedures for foreign companies importing technology into China.

Technology imports include patent licences and transfers, technical services and the transfer of trade secrets.