Insights From China on Multinationals in Intellectual Property Inflows

Since China established its policy of intellectual property (IP) protection from the 1980s, the merits and drawbacks of the young IP system have been feverishly discussed inside and outside China. However, a systematic study on the practice of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in China from an IP perspective is a blank spot. This article, based on a survey of 51 UK and US MNEs and their subsidiaries in China, evaluates the problems these companies have encountered as a consequence of their IP flows into different Chinese enterprises. It is also to analyse the causes of the problems and to suggest possible methods of avoiding future problems