The Ministry Of Commerce Wants To Launch An Early Warning System To Fight Against Trade Barriers.

In order to solve the barriers of Chinese enterprises to trade protectionism, the Ministry of Commerce intends to conduct a series of intellectual property risk verification of a series of complaints costs through a "patent early warning" digital model system, which provides reference and warning for Chinese enterprises to open up overseas markets and deal with trade barriers.

Chinese enterprises are more difficult to win than lose.

Statistics show that since 1995, the United States has launched 337 surveys of Chinese products every year, showing a growing trend.

Especially after China's accession to the WTO, the US's 337 survey of China increased rapidly.

As the number of cases continues to rise, the product structure of Chinese enterprises is constantly upgrading, and electronic products are involved in the most cases.

According to statistics provided by Min Sen, an Associate Research Fellow of the International Trade Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, before 1998, the 337 Chinese products in the US survey were mainly light industrial products. After 1998, the products investigated involved electronics, light industry, machinery, chemicals, automobiles, metallurgy, building materials, medical and pharmaceutical products, and computer software, semiconductor integrated circuits and other products became the main products of the 337 survey in the United States.

"With the continuous improvement of China's manufacturing technology level and the increasing technological content of export products, foreign enterprises' restrictions on the entry of Chinese products have also shifted to high-end.

"Min Sen analysis.

What is worrying is that in these survey cases, Chinese enterprises have won more or less.

In the 337 investigation case initiated by the United States in 1986~2008 years, 80 cases have been closed.

Among them, 13 cases were settled by conciliation, accounting for 16.3%, 8 of the petitioner's withdrawal and the limited exclusion order, accounting for 10% respectively, and the rest were all lost.

337 the survey has become the unbearable pain for Chinese enterprises.

The issue of intellectual property rights in China's foreign trade has become a core hot spot.

The United States has resorted to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism in China for a long time, which has led to the Sino US bilateral intellectual property negotiations being suspended. In the aspect of regional economic integration, the EU has raised the issue of intellectual property in China to the main issues of bilateral economic and trade. At the national level, the United States has included China in the list of key observation countries of the 301 clause /306 clause. Japan, the developed countries in Europe and even some developing countries have followed the US on the issue of intellectual property rights in China at the national level. At the enterprise level, the US enterprises launched a large number of 337 surveys (including 332 and 334) of Chinese export enterprises to the US, and European enterprises rush to register Chinese well-known trademarks (including time-honored brands) and so on. At the world trade organization level

Min Sen revealed that in order to deal with the more serious 337 investigations, the Ministry of Commerce's task force has developed a patent warning system for mathematical models.

"Patent early-warning" refers to the investigation and study of the risk of intellectual property rights such as whether the products should be prosecuted, the cost of litigation, the cost of lawyers and so on, through the way of risk assessment and so on, which involves 337 investigations in China's import and export trade in advance.

Based on the risk assessment model and evaluation index system established by enterprises, enterprises will test their own intellectual property risk index in foreign trade.

According to min Sen, under the guidance of the system, the relevant personnel acquired data of relevant 3 months' data collection and 3 months' model establishment, and obtained the corresponding evaluation results, providing reference and warning for Chinese enterprises to open up overseas markets, so as to avoid domestic enterprises wasting unnecessary energy and money to deal with foreign investigations, and at the same time, play a positive role in dealing with us trade barriers to China.

Enterprises appealed to the government to share complaints.

Xue Rongjiu, vice president of the China World Trade Organization Research Association, said, "the early warning system for the US 337 investigation is likely to bring about a revolutionary" change "to China's response to foreign trade barriers.

But how to implement it and how it works is still waiting for some time to observe.

All along, domestic enterprises in the process of coping with the 337 investigation, "alone" mostly, whether to answer or not, how to respond, mostly to discuss with their lawyers on their own.

If this new early warning measure can be effectively implemented, then every anti-dumping case will be able to provide sufficient research data for enterprises to help enterprises analyze the root cause of the problem, the cost of winning the lawsuit, whether to sue or not.

Let enterprises do well in preparation and increase the probability of winning the lawsuit.

Some enterprises involved in 337 surveys also said that unlike other foreign trade surveys, the 337 survey involved almost none of the enterprises, but the whole industry.

In fact, the 337 survey conducted by any US enterprise can be said to be a survey of our entire industry, and the cost of a company is very high. Therefore, we hope that when the government does early warning system in the future, it will consider whether it can help enterprises to share part of the cost of litigation. After all, coping with the 337 investigation is not an enterprise matter.

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