CHINA is to conduct a sweep of government computers to weed out pirated software and encourage companies to use legitimate software.
The moves are part of a crackdown on the infringement of intellectual property rights announced yesterday.
A six-month campaign will target illegally copied or fake goods from software and medicines to corn falsely labeled as organic, Deputy Commerce Minister Jiang Zengwei told a news conference in Beijing.
"There is still a lot of room for improvement," Jiang said.
He promised closer cooperation with the United States, Japan and Europe.
China has increased penalties and launched repeated crackdowns, but foreign governments and trade groups say its enforcement is neither strict nor severe enough.
Pirated software
In a move to curb demand for pirated software, the Chinese government required operating systems to be pre-installed on personal computers sold in China since early this decade.
The share of PCs in China with legitimate operating systems rose from 87.7 percent in 2007 to 98 percent last year, a deputy director of the National Copyright Administration, Yan Xiaohong, told the news conference.
Chinese copyright inspectors will conduct the nationwide sweep of local and central government computers to ensure they are using authorized software.
Checks of computers in central government departments and agencies would be completed by May next year, said Yan. The inspection of software used by local governments would be finished by October.
"Greater efforts will be made to establish a long-term mechanism comprising funding, procurement, utilization and asset management for ensuring the use of genuine software among government organs," Yan said.
The NCA and other government agencies issued a circular in 2006 requiring government bodies to buy only computers with pre-installed genuine operating system software and to allocate funds to buy authorized software.
Central government organizations spent a total of 794 million yuan (US$119 million) on genuine software from 2007 to the end of 2009, according to official figures.
Authorities will also step up efforts to encourage businesses to use legitimate software and launch a special campaign against the illegal pre-installation of unauthorized software, said Yan.
"The fight against Internet-enabled IPR infringement, which remains a severe problem, is also a priority in the ongoing crackdown," he said.
Since 2005, China has continued to crack down on Internet-enabled IPR infringement, uncovering more than 2,621 cases, Yan said.
Government agencies will also step up the fight against the distribution of fake medicines over the Internet and deal with the dissemination of false information concerning medicine over the Internet, Jiang said.
(Shanghai Daily/Xinhua)