The US launched two cases against China at the WTO in April. The first over what officials described as deficiencies in China's legal regime for protecting and enforcing copyrights and trade marks, and the second over China's alleged barriers to trade in books, music, videos and films.

China has spoken out against the cases and has blocked US attempts to set up panels at the WTO to hear the cases. The WTO announced on September 25 that a panel has been established to hear the first case. The US has now requested a panel for the second.

Dudas said that since the cases were filed, his Chinese counterparts had declined to hold another meeting of the US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade Intellectual Property Rights Working Group.

“We’ve seen increased cooperation in some areas but we’ve seen cooperation in other areas slow,” he was quoted as saying while giving the opening remarks at Ambassador Randt’s IPR roundtable in Beijing.

“The US request for WTO dispute resolution was not intended to substitute for bilateral cooperation on a full range of IP issues. Rather the WTO mechanism is supposed to help resolve specific disputes that have not been solved bilaterally,” he said.

At the roundtable, at sessions closed to the press, participants discussed a range of issues including shadow companies, criminal enforcement, the new Anti-Monopoly law and poor data protection.