This Day, That Year

Item from June 16, 1998, in China Daily: Officials from the Guangdong provincial government and Guangzhou Customs Office yesterday destroyed 2.8 million pirated video compact disks.

The action is a further proof of the province’s longterm commitment to protecting intellectual property rights.

China has made good progress in the protection of intellectual property rights as the country aims to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship.

Earlier this year, the State Council, China’s Cabinet, issued a guideline on IPR infringements.

The government has vowed to improve rules and regulations related to IPR in newly-emerging fields such as Internet Plus and big data during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20).

New measures have been taken to fight piracy in the wake of the exponential growth in internet usage.

In July 2015, e-commerce giant Alibaba unveiled a digital tool that can add an invisible mark on pictures uploaded by online shop owners to track when the images are used without authorization.

The UniTrust Time Stamp Authority, co-founded by the National Time Service Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing UniTrust Technical Service, keeps track of the creation and modification time of digital files.

Last year, the courts handled a record 152,072 intellectual property cases, according to a report released by the Supreme People’s Court in April.