China is working hard to repair its reputation as a place where theft of intellectual property is rampant.

But don’t be lulled into thinking everything is OK. The truth is that counterfeiting and piracy remain common.

Yet companies typically fall short of doing everything they can to protect their intellectual property in China. What steps should they be taking? Based on our own business and research experience in China, along with our interviews of dozens of executives, lawyers, consultants and others, here’s a checklist for companies to consider.

Educate your employees. Employees are the source of most intellectual-property losses, often unintentionally. Because intellectual property is a relatively young concept in China, it is fair to expect that the work force needs to be educated about its importance.

Too often, the intellectual-property rules that companies try to teach employees when they’re hired are difficult for many people to relate to their daily work. Instead, training in intellectual-property protection should concentrate on everyday examples, like the danger of discussing the business with friends outside the company. And the message should be reinforced regularly in meetings. It may also be helpful to redefine IP within the company as information protection, since the term intellectual property fails to resonate with many employees.

Don’t tell your employees everything. Strict security is needed to prevent theft and the more mundane leakage of information as employees leave the company. To tighten security, the most basic step is to insist on nondisclosure and noncompete agreements with all employees. But such agreements are only as robust as the integrity of those who sign them, and seeking legal redress for transgressions can be costly, distracting and fruitless in the Chinese system. Management needs to be proactive by preventing employees from obtaining information that is critical to the company’s future.

To achieve this, employees should have access only to the information they need to perform their work. In most cases, this is largely a case of controlling access to company databases or printed documents. But steps can be taken on the operational side as well. For example, it shouldn’t be possible for someone to walk through the production process and read gauges to cull data such as line speeds and critical temperatures and pressures. That data can easily be disguised by installing gauges with erroneous readings decipherable only to those who need the information.

Be quick with patent and trademark registration. Foreign companies entering the Chinese market are sometimes