Criminal Intellectual Property Enforcement in Asia

IP scholars are not familiar with criminal law, nor are criminal law scholars familiar with IP law; Criminal Enforcement of Intellectual Property in Asia: Sources, Significance, and Side-Effects delves into this no man's land. It identifies and addresses the use (or overuse) of criminal punishment for protecting IP rights, a long-overlooked aspect of IP law that is shaping and distorting the IP landscape in Asia. This is in stark contrast to leading Western jurisdictions, whose criminal punishment of IP infringement, while provided for, is rarely enforced.

The overarching theme of this book is to critically review the rationale, legitimacy, and effectiveness of criminalizing IP infringement; assess its significance; expose its consequences; and propose suggestions for reform. The volume is divided into five parts. It starts with criminological discussion of IP crimes, followed by five chapters that study the sources and models of criminal punishment of IP infringement, namely international treaties, the US, UK, Germany, and the EU. It then surveys six major civil-law Asian jurisdictions (Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, Thailand, and Vietnam) and four major common-law Asian jurisdictions (India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore). These studies have been organized according to the chronological order in which each jurisdiction introduced criminal punishment of IP infringement, with each chapter following a common structure. The volume concludes with a comparative study, policy analysis, including rethinking the criminal sanctions against the background of generative AI and the evolution of IP, and reform suggestions for leading IP jurisdictions, Asian jurisdictions, and the WTO community.

Comprehensive and timely, Criminal Enforcement of Intellectual Property in Asia provides readers in Asia and beyond with valuable insights into why and how different regimes use criminal sanctions, their significance, and side-effects in an era shaped by rapid technological developments such as generative AI.

Kung-Chung Liu, Professor of Law, Jinan University,Tianxiang He, Associate Professor, City University of Hong Kong, School of Law

Kung-Chung Liu teaches at Jinan University, China, and he is also adjunct chair professor at Shandong University. Professor Liu's fields of specialty include intellectual property law, antitrust and unfair competition law, communications law and the interface between those disciplines, with a geographic focus on greater China and Asia. Professor Liu has authored two monographs: IP Laws and Regimes in Major Asian Economies: Combing Through Thousand Threads of IP To Peace in Asia (Routledge, 2022); Deciphering IP Law and Its Conflict and Complementarity with Competition Law: Global Norms Against Asian Context (Routledge, 2025). He has also edited a further sixteen volumes in English.


Tianxiang He currently holds the position of Associate Professor at the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong. Professor He is the accomplished author of the book Copyright and Fan Productivity in China: A Cross-jurisdictional Perspective (Springer, 2017), alongside numerous articles published in notable journals such as the American Journal of Comparative Law, Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property, Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A., Computer Law & Security Review, The University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy, Hong Kong Law Journal, and Asia Pacific Law Review.