[Guest Book Review] Criminal Intellectual Property Enforcement in Asia: Sources, Significance and Side-Effects
Jocelyn Bosse
[Guest Book Review] Criminal Intellectual Property Enforcement in Asia: Sources, Significance and Side-Effects
Jocelyn Bosse Thursday, June 04, 2026 - Asia, Book review, criminal enforcement
The IPKat has received and is pleased to host the review of Criminal Intellectual Property Enforcement in Asia: Sources, Significance and Side-Effects edited by Kung-Chung Liu and Tianxiang He. This book review has been prepared by Katfriend Niharika Salar (PhD candidate, Queen's University Belfast).
Here is what Niharika writes:
"This edited volume arrives at a moment when IP scholarship is increasingly turning its attention to Asian legal systems on their own terms. Moving beyond earlier approaches that viewed the region primarily through the lens of compliance with international norms, recent scholarship has begun to foreground Asia’s distinct legal traditions and policy priorities. Against this backdrop, the volume sets out to offer a valuable and timely examination of criminal IP enforcement across Asia.
The book is available in hardback and ebook
But criminology first…
The volume’s opening chapter by Professor Roland Moerland, is perhaps one of its strongest contributions. By approaching criminal IP enforcement through a criminological lens, he sets a thoughtful and theoretically grounded tone for the collection. He interrogates the “IP crime wave” narrative with appropriate scepticism, noting that industry actors have actively constructed this discourse to push for harsher criminalization. For a general reader unfamiliar with criminology, or for IP specialists who may not have had the opportunity to engage with criminal law theory, this chapter alone justifies the volume.
The international treaty chapter by Professor Liu in Chapter 2 is similarly strong. Its careful tracing of the evolution from TRIPS to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and the power asymmetries embedded in US-led bilateral agreements with Singapore, Korea, and China, frames the larger argument of the book.
Jurisdictional chapters
The jurisdictional chapters on Japan (Chapter 7), Taiwan (Chapter 8), Korea (Chapter 9), and China (Chapter 10) are collectively the heart of the book. This Kat particularly enjoyed reading some of the contributions in comparative IP literature, for instance the Japan chapter’s analysis of the Winny P2P file-sharing software case as a chilling-effect cautionary tale. Professor Suzuki demonstrates how Japan has the broadest and harshest criminal IP provision in the world but still rarely used them for most IP types. Professor Lee’s chapter on Taiwan is a critique of a system over-reliant on criminal complaints at the cost of stunting civil law development.
Professor Kim, in the chapter on Korea, argues that the country’s IP regime criminalises an excessively broad range of infringements, particularly copyright violations. This creates a risk that ordinary internet users are drawn into the criminal justice system. The chapter illustrates this concern through the “font settlement business,” where font creators and law firms use the threat of criminal prosecution to pressure users into paying settlements, highlighting how criminal copyright provisions can be exploited as a profit-making and strategic enforcement tool.
Professor He, while addressing China, presents a nuanced discussion of the “Criminal First, Civil Later” doctrine and its unintended consequences. Chief Judge Yuthayotin & Judge Atcharawongchai’s (Chapter 11) frank acknowledgment that IP offenders are treated by Thai courts as minor vendors and not serious criminals, despite statutory penalties more severe than those for ordinary theft, captures the gap between law in the books and law in action.
The chapters on Vietnam (Chapter 12), India (Chapter 13), Malaysia (Chapter 14), and Singapore (Chapter 16) attempt to expose the gap between legislative ambition and enforcement reality. Dr Le and Dr Nguyen show that Vietnam recorded nearly 180,000 administrative IP cases between 2006 and 2016 against just 21 criminal prosecutions. They argue that it’s a disproportion rooted in structural rigidity inherited from its Soviet-era Penal Code.
Mr Thikkavarapu’s chapter on India demonstrates how penalties for copyright and trademark offences can exceed those for certain offences involving bodily harm. Meanwhile, the threat of police action is often used to pressure alleged infringers into settlements, with start-ups frequently caught in the crossfire. Professor Lim documents Malaysia’s decades of escalating penalties alongside a rather candid admission that no local research exists on whether any of it deters infringement. Lee and Chan present Singapore as the region’s more functional enforcement regimes, yet even there physical raids have declined sharply as enforcement shifts online.
Hong Kong (Chapter 15) stands apart from other Asian jurisdictions in the volume because Professor Lee and Liu show that it deliberately limits criminal IP enforcement to the minimum required by TRIPS and treats IP primarily as a private right to be enforced through civil remedies.
The concluding comparative chapter (Chapter 18) by Professor Liu serves as a strong capstone to the volume as it brings together its key themes and offers a coherent set of reform proposals. He argues that Asian economies should treat Article 61 of TRIPS as a maximum standard as opposed to a minimum one, limit criminal sanctions to cases of deliberate commercial-scale trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy and give priority to civil remedies before resorting to criminal enforcement, following the German approach.
The volume’s organisational approach
The dedicated chapters on the United States (Chapter 3), the United Kingdom (Chapter 4), Germany (Chapter 5), and the European Union (Chapter 6) collectively comprise roughly one-third of the volume and are presented as comparative context. Professor Manta traces how the US moved from 19th-century piracy to aggressive IP enforcement only once its own industries stood to gain. Dr. Cheng-Davies warns that the UK’s expanding criminal sanctions risk over-criminalisation and may chill innovation. Professor Liu observes that Germany criminalises all IP rights yet rarely prosecutes, presenting restrained enforcement as a model worth seeking inspiration from. Professors Anke Moerland, Roland Moerland, and Sanders demonstrate that the EU, lacking any harmonised criminal IP framework, relies on operational cooperation through Europol and European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats (EMPACT).
A common theme is visible across these chapters. Western jurisdictions maintain broad criminal IP laws but deploy them sparingly, with civil remedies doing most of the work. This comparative framing also carries historical weight. TRIPS emerged from complex multilateral negotiations in which the US and Europe were both highly influential. The resulting standards were nonetheless pressed upon Asian countries through sustained trade pressure (as noted in other chapters). The UK’s common law tradition was inherited by Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, while Germany’s civil law lineage shaped Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. These are legitimate reasons for inclusion. Yet, by not confronting the implications of this structural choice more directly, the volume leaves a central tension unexplored. It critiques how Global North jurisdictions have shaped criminal IP enforcement in Asia through norm diffusion and trade pressure, while continuing to position those same jurisdictions as the principal reference points against which Asian legal developments are measured.
The volume’s geographic coverage also leaves notable gaps. Jurisdictions such as Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Indonesia are absent, meaning that “Asia” is represented largely through its more economically developed and institutionally mature jurisdictions. This is important because criminal IP enforcement operates differently across legal and institutional contexts. Reforms that work in systems with specialised courts and effective civil enforcement may be far less transferable where civil remedies remain inaccessible and administrative enforcement plays a larger role.
Dr. Ali’s chapter on generative AI and decriminalization (Chapter 17) is one of the volume’s most forward-looking contributions. Its “creation-examination paradox” highlights how AI can generate creative works far faster than IP offices can process them, raising questions about the future viability of criminal IP enforcement. While the chapter sits somewhat apart from the volume’s largely jurisdiction-focused structure, its inclusion is understandable given the centrality of generative AI to contemporary IP debates.
Concluding thoughts
This volume is definitely an important and largely successful contribution to the literature on comparative IP enforcement. The quality of its country studies, the strength of its analysis, and the coherence of its reform agenda make it a valuable resource for students, academics, and policymakers alike. Its limitations, including the significant focus on Western jurisdictions and the exclusion of several South and Central Asian countries, do not undermine its overall contribution. They, in fact, suggest a rich agenda for future research and perhaps a second volume that extends the analysis to parts of Asia that remain underrepresented in the current collection."
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