Pattloch was speaking at a session on the future of IP protection in China during the 5th Annual Asia-Pacific IP Forum in Hong Kong, which was organised by Managing IP and Asialaw magazines.

But he said that patent protection in China was unlikely to go beyond the protections outlined in the TRIPs Agreement. "China regards a broad scope of patent protection as not in the national interest" he said.

When talking about patent protection in China, Pattloch also referred to the controversial Chint v Schneider case, in which Schneider Electric, a French electronics maker, was ordered to pay $45 million in damages for infringing a utility model patent. In China utility model patents are granted without substantive examination.

Speaking after the session, Pattloch told Managing IP that granting damages on that scale is "an irregular use of the patent system and an unwarranted benefit for that company".

He added that the EU believed the utility model patent in question "needs to be looked at very, very carefully."

But Pattloch also praised China's National IP Strategy, which was released in June this year, describing it as "a written endorsement of a real roadmap which all the agencies in China must follow".

During the same session, Mark Cohen, former IP attaché at the US Embassy in Beijing and now of counsel at Jones Day, said that businesses should not have unrealistic expectations about what governments can do to protect their IP rights.

"It is a disaster for businesses to run to government to get their IP problems solved," said Cohen, stressing: "We don't want to replace private lawyers."

Cohen also outlined the number of different US agencies that now deal with IP issues in China, including the joint committee on commerce and trade, the strategic economic dialogue, the joint liaison group on law enforcement as well as the relevant US and Chinese patent and trade mark offices. He said that communication between all the different agencies on the US side was difficult, and that businesses "should not assume that everybody talks to each other".

During the Forum other in-house counsel, business leaders and private practitioners in the region gave presentations on issues such as how to tackle online counterfeit sellers, cross-border enforcement in the Asia-Pacific region and the future of IP in China.

A series of workshops offered practical advice on how to protect IP in the UAE, China, Malaysia, Korea and The Philippines.

The 5th Annual Asia-Pacific IP Forum was organised by Managing IP and Asialaw at Kowloon Shangri-la, Hong Kong on November 4 and 5.

The October edition of Managing IP contains an article by Mark Cohen on Politics and IP in China in which he looks back at his four years as IP attaché in Beijing.