On October 13, 2014, SAIC and MIIT jointly issued  “Opinions on Reinforcing Collaboration on Supervision of Domestic Online Trading Websites and Active Promotion of the Development of E-commerce”. Simone IP Services has provided a translation here.  The original announcement of SAIC is found at: http://www.scaic.gov.cn/zwdt/zxfb/201410/t20141013_177728.html.

The Opinion sets up a collaboration mechanism between these two important agencies.  The intention behind this collaboration is to help address “management of domestic online  trading  websites,  forcefully  strike  against  illegal  operation  of domestic online  trading  websites, strive  to  create  an  online  trading environment of  fair competition, earnestly  safeguard  the  legitimate  rights and  interests  of  consumers  and vendors,  and  actively  promote  healthy development  of  e-commerce,”  The issues that the collaboration is intended to address include “phenomena  such  as forgery and fraudulent  use  of  legitimate market players’ identity for setting up website, intellectual property rights infringement,  the sale  of counterfeit  and  shoddy  goods,  malicious  fraud, unfair  competition,  false  advertising, etc.”

Online infringement has also been a focus of the National IP Leading Group. It issued a “Strategy for Working on Striking Against Infringement of Intellectual Property and the Manufacturing and Sales of Substandard Products in the Online Environment” ( 打击联网领域侵犯知识产权和 售假冒伪劣商品工作方案 ) on June 18, 2014 to step up enforcement and coordination for the second half of 2014.

Although this Opinion appears to be a positive step, greater international collaboration with on-line infringement a focus on the domestic environment may also need to be supplemented with increased international cooperation to address cross-border trade in infringing and substandard products.