In China the criminal protection of IPR is heavily overshadowed by the administrative enforcement discussed in Chapter 5. Criminal enforcement could be an effective method of IPR protection, if only because the possibility of serving prison time has a highly deterrent effect on potential counterfeiters. Furthermore, the criminal justice system in China is extremely adept at producing guilty verdicts in the cases that do reach trial. In theory, criminal enforcement should be a viable option for serious cases of IPR infringement. However, according to data discussed in the present chapter, criminal IPR cases equaled one-tenth of 1 percent of the administrative IPR cases handled in 2004. This then raises the question why criminal enforcement is used so rarely in China.

The major obstacle to criminal enforcement in IPR is that so few cases are placed on the docket. The underlying cause is that criminal enforcement is a bureaucratically complex, multistep process. Most often a case reaches the police through an administrative agency that must be willing to consider transferring the matter to the police in the first place. The police must then decide to accept the case and, thereafter, to transfer it to the Procuratorate, which, in turn, must decide whether to pursue the matter by arresting the suspect and introducing the case in court. Finally, the courts themselves have the option either to reject or to accept the case. Eventually, after a guilty verdict, the suspect may be sentenced to a fixed term of imprisonment.