Domestic enterprises wanting to go public should aim to use legal computer software, an official said yesterday.

The country will work strenuously to encourage and supervise enterprises to build a sound environment for the software industry, head of copyright administration Liu Binjie added at a national legal software conference.

"Strengthening protection for legal software and creating a conducive environment is a significant part of the national intellectual property rights (IPR) strategy", said Vice-Premier Wu Yi, who is also head of the national IPR working team, in a letter to the conference.

Initiated last year by nine authorities including the copyright and information industry, commerce, finance administrations and regulators of banks, insurances and securities firms, the ongoing campaign targeting enterprises is seen as a powerful government effort to realize the wide use of legal software.

Domestic enterprises are responding positively to the country's call to use legal computer software since then, Liu said.

More than 1,500 large enterprises with annual sales of over 300 million yuan (US$40.5 million) are currently using legal computer software, a result of the nine ministries' efforts to weed out software piracy nationwide.

The groups include the headquarters of the major 157 State-owned enterprisessuch as Sinopec and Huaneng Group, and their subsidiaries across China.

Another 1,300 large-scale en-terprises are reportedly speeding up efforts to install licensed software on the operating system of their computers.