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AN anti-piracy liaison station to be headed by the Municipal Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision will open next month.
The liaison station will integrate local law offices, quality assessment institutions and media organizations to help companies sort out intellectual property rights (IPR) infringements. ¡°The move is in line with the city government¡¯s resolution to offer foreign enterprises in Shanghai a better investment environment,"said Wang Kaitai, director of the quality supervision division with the bureau, the city¡¯s IPR watchdog. Companies can now refer IPR issues to the station which will use their information to seize counterfeited goods and imprison IPR violators. This will allow companies to focus on their own business rather than having to pursue IPR matters, Wang said. ¡°The law offices will help them trace the source of the counterfeiting and put forward cases for their prosecution,"he said. Statistics indicate that the bureau, in co-operation with some big foreign enterprises like Intel and Unilever, has cracked down on 185 cases concerning fake and inferior products since 1999. More than 270,000 fake products, worth 5.6 million yuan ($677,000), were seized and 18 piracy manufacturing sites were busted during the period. Household commodities for daily life, consumer goods and big-name products are the main targets of counterfeiters because they sell well, according to Wang. Lu Guoping, in charge of legal matters at Shanghai Hitachi Power Tools Corporation Ltd, one of the biggest producers of power tools in China, welcomed the news saying: ¡°It will improve procedures for dealing with piracy no end."Lu estimates his company has lost up to 100 million yuan ($12 million) through copies of their products and having to cut prices to compete with the cheaper counterfeited goods since 1997. Shanghai Star |
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