After years of efforts, China's domestic software industry has made a significant step forward, with its products winning half of government purchase orders in the national software legitimization campaign, released by 2011 Forum of China Software Conference.
Software legitimization and intellectual property rights protection is crucial to the promotion and development of software industry, said Han Jun, Deputy Director General of the Department of Science and Technology from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Preliminary statistics show an increasing trend in the quantity of genuine operating systems pre-installed on PC, which grew from 26.65 million sets in 2007 to 40.23 million sets in 2009; its share even reached 98.02% in 2010.
It is known that pirated software has been banned in all central governmental departments by the end of May, 2011 and the campaign is now being vigorously promoted among local authorities. According to the latest data, domestically developed software purchased by government is comparable to foreign software in terms of quantity, no matter in central or local level; but the situation will not be that optimistic if counted in value, for foreign software is often sold at a higher price.
Software piracy is not only a headache for China, but also a big problem around the world. According to a report jointly released by IDC and BSA in May 2011, the business value of pirated software hit a record high of 58.8 billion US dollars worldwide in 2010, up 14%, and the U.S. ranked the top with 9.15 billion US dollars.
"Software legitimization is of great importance to the development of software industry and the construction of an innovative country; it is also concerned to the fulfillment of China's commitment to international society," pointed out by Wang Zhicheng, Deputy Director General of Copyright Administrative Department of the National Copyright Administration. "Foreign and domestic software is treated equally in government purchase; only those having good faith and providing good services can win our order."
A number of domestic software designers are also gradually recognized by the market. According to Liu Aijun, Technical Director of CAXA, an industrial software company based in Beijing, software legitimization provides a good opportunity for the industry, which also helps CAXA achieve a satisfying market performance. [Chinese version is available on chinahightech.com]
(Source: IPR in China)
