Hao Dong, a PHD Candidate at the City University in Hong Kong, Lecturer at Yunnan University (mainland China), and publisher of a great blog on IP issues, has posted an article at SSRN on “illegal works” and the recent WTO decision in the U.S.-China dispute. The abstract:
This article reviews the copyright dilemma of illegal works in the context of Chinese copyright system. Under the current law, not merely the works with illegal content, but also the works did not fulfill the procedural requirement will be denied the copyright protection. Article 4(1) may find legitimacy in the domestic level, but does not comply with the WTO law. The three criteria in Article 13 of TRIPS Agreement can be applied to examine Article 4(1). The key problem lies in the uncertainty of the scope of denial of copyright. This leads to the Super-national Treatment. Based on these analyses, the last part of the article proposed some suggestions for the future legal reform.
Recent scholarship from the 
