At a recent IP forum in Hangzhou, officials and professionals called for innovative IP protection models and wider collaboration to meet the new challenges brought by emerging technologies.

The second China Internet Innovation and Intellectual Property Protection Summit, held from Oct 17 to 18, attracted more than 300 delegates from around the globe, many of whom were experts in IT, law, education and finance.

"The rapid development of the knowledge-based economy and IT has offered us excitement and problems as well," said Shi Xiansheng, deputy secretary-general of the Internet Society of China. "Online piracy, trademark infringement and unfair competition have become IP challenges because they feature difficulties in collecting evidence."

He said that as online trading and e-business are becoming a trend, it is "increasingly important" to protect Internet-related IP, such as trademark and domain name.

To build a healthy online environment and guarantee the benefits of both Web users and Internet service providers, Shi suggested companies improve their IP awareness and develop proprietary mechanisms for protecting intellectual property.

Jin Kesheng, deputy chief of the IP court in the Supreme People's Court, said the judiciary is playing a "fundamental, effective and leading role" in IP protection.

"By establishing judiciary explanations, the high court can set up unified standards of judgment when dealing with IP disputes," Jin said. "The experience of handling some complex cases can be used to guide the development of industries."

"Compared with other countries and regions in the world, China has more cases and experience in the field of judiciary protection in Internet-related IP, but more problems as well," he said, calling for closer cooperation among courts, lawyers, notaries and IP experts.

Currently, more than half of all IP lawsuits in China pertain to copyright, and half of all copyright cases involve the Internet, Jin said.

Copyright and patent mechanisms are used to protect IP in the Internet-based business, but the patent system is the best way to protect innovations, said Gao Lulin, former commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office.

"The copyright protects the originality of formats more than the content, so even though you imitate the ideas of an invention, it is not copyright infringement as long as you don't copy the model," he explained.

"But in term of patent protection, it constitutes infringement to copy other people's ideas behind a product."

zhangzhao@chinadaily.com.cn