intellectual property rights. under the agreement on trade-related intellectual property rights,World Trade Organization members must adopt and enforce strong and non-discriminatory minimum standards of protection for intellectual property. Many developed countries are extending strong protection to controversial areas, including biotechnology and electronic databases. Despite some reform, intellectual property rights remain a serious problem for Multinational Enterprises in China. For example, several US companies have found that their local joint venture partners or people whom they have contracted have pirated aspects of their product design.foreign partners are also frustrated by the lack of power to enforce damages obtained through the court system.
While not all measures are effective in reducing such pirating, Multinational Enterprises have attempted to mitigate this problem by limiting technology and product design transfer ti older generation technologies and by employing expatriates to control areas where such sensitive information exists in the foreign-invested venture.