China revises rules for piracy punishment

April 07, 2007 China has stepped up the fight against intellectual property theft by lowering the threshold to prosecute the makers and sellers of illegally copied movies, television, music and software, a Supreme People's Court spokeswoman said Friday. During the visit, the U.S. undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property rights said that 81% of counterfeit goods seized by U.S. customs officials in 2006 originated in China. The new judicial interpretation issued by China's top court late Thursday states that anybody caught manufacturing 500 or more counterfeit discs can be prosecuted and faces up to three years in prison, the official Xinhua news agency first reported.

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