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Three men have been sentenced to prison for contracting companies to make fake copies of Microsoft software, as a crackdown on widespread piracy continues.

Wu jun, Han Ming and Wu Xiaojun were sentenced to between six months and one year in prison for "illegal business operations," the National Copyright Administration of China said yesterday.

The three had commissioned two companies to make 59,000 illegal copies of a Microsoft program that restores operating systems, it said.

The companies - Beijing Zhongxinlian Co and Tianjin Minzu Disc Co - were fined a total of 90,000 yuan (US$11,000), the administration said. Their profits from the project, totaling 11,000 yuan, were also confiscated.

"This case does not involve a great deal of money but it is quite influential since pirated Microsoft products are very common in some areas," said Duan Yuping, an administration spokeswoman.

Yesterday's cases were announced during US Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans' Beijing visit. He urged the central government to do more to stop product piracy.

Vice premier Wu Yi, who spoke at an intellectual property round-table conference, attended by Evans, yesterday said China had improved intellectual property rights (IPR) protection for American businesses.

"So far, positive results have been achieved," Wu said. "Much progress has already been made."

But she also said it will take a long time to fundamentally change IPR protection.
"The establishment and improvement of IPR protection cannot be completed overnight, especially in a country of 1.3 billion people with a low economic and technological level," she said. "The government needs to work with the business community and consumers for a long period of time."

Wu said she hopes that the US government and companies would understand this and have confidence in China's long-term commitment to IPR protection.

Lax IPR enforcement continues to be a contentious issue between the United States and China. The two countries set up an IPR work group last year and reached a consensus on IPR protection.