Search

Intellectual property is becoming one of the most valuable and powerful assets in the increasingly privatized global economy. Globalization, technological advances, the Internet and e-commerce have made intellectual property (IP) infringements an escalating and pervasive issue in both developed countries such as the US and developing countries/regions such as Taiwan and mainland China. However, due to local interests, agency priorities, different levels of economic development and different enforcement structures, the US, Taiwan and mainland China enforce the similar IP laws on the books very differently in action. First, this paper intends to portrait a general picture of IPR enforcement mechanisms in the US, Taiwan and mainland China, and to estimate the proportions of IPR infringements handled by three major enforcement systems: the criminal judicial system, the civil judicial system and the administrative system. Then it focuses the attention on criminal judicial systems specifically. It analyzes the different roles criminal courts play in handling IPR infringements in the three regions. The different roles of criminal courts include: to facilitate governmental policies, to enforce the criminal law, to protect the fairness of the system, to punish or to deter serious infringers, and to bring compensation to victims. The study implicates that apart from conventional jurisprudential wisdom, criminal courts could serve vastly different functions in handling economic crimes in countries/regions with different political regimes, legal structures and cultures. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]