Unless you are one of the few who are somehow more concerned with storing up treasures in heaven (it is after all a narrow road that leads there), you know that there will always be someone looking to break in and steal your treasures and ancient relics. Like Cain and Able, the bond between property and theft is set in stone. It is for this very reason that farmers in a few villages in Shaanxi have taken to 'sleeping with their pigs' after repeated thefts in the wake of rising pork prices. By means of the Shanghai Daily's purple prose we read of brazen thieves in Lantian County who drugged the 'pigs or dogs' that guarded the enclosures, dyed seven white pigs black and even got the unwitting owner to help them load the stolen pigs onto their truck.

As a lab for monitoring China's eastern coast for 'red tides' (outbreaks of algae in organic matter) was dedicated in Shanghai this month, recent media reports have hinted at another red tide of recurring economic espionage involving Chinese nationals and foreign military technology, and an even bigger tide of sophisticated cyber attacks on the most sensitive computer networks in the U.S. After the severe sentence handed out this month to Chinese engineer Chi Mak, who had supposedly been placed in the U.S. for more than 20 years to gradually burrow into the defense-industrial establishment, one senior U.S. official likened China's sophisticated intelligence-gathering operation to an intellectual vacuum cleaner with a diverse network of individuals systematically collecting U.S. know-how. 

Courts in China, however, cannot quite deliver the same hammer blow like that dealt to Chi Mak (despite the Economist's hopeful assessment for China's 'new' intellectual property courts). In the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society at Oxford's report Regulating Enterprise in China, Andrew Mertha examined the complex nexus underlying enforcement of a given law, regulation or judicial decision in China. As courts in China fall under the jurisdiction of local governments as just another civil branch, confidence in the judicial system is not very high and courts are institutionally weak and largely unable to enforce their own decisions. Enforcement is also complicated by the intricate levels of administrative ranks and complex hierarchical structures that characterize power relations in China, and as courts are constantly afflicted by a scarcity of resources, political directives from above and powerful individuals or unscrupulous commercial concerns could all inordinately affect enforcement.

In the context of the relative novelty in China of the concept of private property embedded in IPR and the conflicting traditional awareness of knowledge as a public good (see Fraunhofer Institute discussion paper), the copying of technologies without paying royalties, unauthorized trademarks and publication infringements are a real challenge for judicial enforcement that is costly and complicated and for administrative enforcement (i.e. the Intellectual Property Office) that lacks independent power and authority. Catching a determined thief (someone like the prisoner who escaped jail when he managed to use a crane to smash through three iron gates in a Hebei prison last month) is just a little harder in China.

And as put by Maarten Roos at China Success Stories, the ineffectiveness of China's IPR protection mechanism is evident in the

high standards for criminal liability of counterfeiters, the high burden of evidence to prove bad faith registrations, and the difficulty to prove damages in civil proceedings.

While these issues will improve with time, owners of intellectual property can

ensure that they have the exclusive rights to their IP in China under Chinese law, and the best decision can be made quickly on whether to take action against a perceived infringement. Such protection, usually inexpensive and rarely time-consuming, is the most basic element to an organization's IP strategy.

Yet if a foreign company fails to be the first to patent their product in China, the best legal advice is (see China Law Blog) 'better luck next time' - somebody made off with your stuff.