China ‘not doing enough on software piracy’

The world’s leading software industry body warned on Monday of a jump in revenues lost to software piracy in China as the country’s government is failing to rein in rampant copyright infringement.

Robert Holleyman, president and chief executive of the Business Software Alliance, said pledges by the Chinese government to help foreign companies gain more revenues from software sales in China and high-profile anti-piracy campaigns had failed to deliver. “All that activity led us to believe that we’d see some fairly rapid reduction of software piracy in China,” Holleyman said. “But none of what I’ve picked up with our companies indicates that they’re seeing the kind of economic growth associated with the sales of software.” The remarks indicate that software market opportunities for companies such as Microsoft are unlikely to keep up with the pace of China’s PC market growth, and that intellectual property rights infringement will remain an irritant in relations with the US and China’s other leading trading partners.