WASHINGTON, Oct 11: US officials filed a World Trade Organisation complaint on Thursday challenging China’s limits on import of products of copyright-intensive industries, such as films, music and books.

It will be the fourth World Trade Organisation case Washington has launched against Beijing in little over a year.

“The United States and China have tried, through formal consultations over the last several months, to address US concerns about the importation and distribution barriers that US movies, music and publications face in China,” said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR).

“Those discussions have unfortunately not led to a resolution of our concerns, and so we are now taking the next step in this case and asking the WTO to establish a panel.” The case will be of particular interest to Hollywood studios, Apple Inc.’s ITunes store and other American media providers possibly suffering from the “less favourable distribution opportunities” in China that the US has cited in its WTO complaint.

The WTO is already investigating three Sino-American trade disputes. Washington accuses China of illegally hindering import of foreign auto parts, providing government subsidies to a number of Chinese industries, and effectively providing a safe haven for product piracy and counterfeiting through excessively high thresholds for criminal prosecution.—Agencies