Few will be surprised to learn that the Office of the United States Trade Representative has placed China on the watch-list again with its 2013 Special 301 Report, a document covering intellectual property right protection.

The West's intellectual property rights system has gone greatly astray in recent years. Rather than encouraging innovation, intellectual property rules promulgated by the West are now merely tools to monopolize and exploit the world market. And the defects of the US intellectual property system are especially glaring. The core competitiveness of more and more American corporations is no longer creativity, but litigation.

In order to keep emerging competitors down, corporations take advantage of intellectual property rules to set up barriers against potential rivals. Many of the West's biggest businesses just scoop up patents en masse and then sue competitors who try to put forward products similar to those they hold the rights to. Such strategies only hobble competition and stifle the market.

The author is Mei Xinyu, an economic commentator.

Source: Guangzhou Daily