This chapter proposes a legal, political, and social framework for a nation to formulate proper copyright policy and minimize the risk of potential IP trade conflicts in the digital age. It examines the challenges that the Internet and digital technology present to the traditional copyright legal system. It reviews and compares the copyright history in the U.S. and China, and explores major rationales behind copyright policies of these two countries as well as the main reasons why they were able to avert potential IP trade wars in recent years. By drawing on their experiences, the author argues that the interest of a country is only best served by tailoring its IP regimes to its particular economic and social circumstances. The author believes a nation’s copyright policy should always strike a sound balance of IP protection and social development, and makes some specific suggestions on how to achieve this in the digital age.
Over the past four decades, Intellectual Property (IP) has been one of the main controversies of US-China trade relations. But the current US-China trade war contains a new focus – technology transfer. This article adopts a socio-legal and economic approach to examine the current technology and trade tensions between these two countries and why China became an Information Technology (IT) powerhouse. It first provides an overview of IP and technology transfer rules under the Phase One US-China Economic and Trade Agreement (POA). It then explores different forms of forced technology transfer activities and the in-depth reasons for the US to shift its main IP concerns from IP enforcement to technology transfer. It explains why the US and China trade war is inevitable, why the current US-China IP-trade war is significantly different from previous ones, and the economic and political reasons behind the global technology leadership competition by the two countries. Finally, the author concludes that the POA and its technology transfer rules are not the ends of the game but just the start of the global technology leadership competition between the US and China.
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