China's General Adiministration of Customs recently announced its IP protection in 2013. According to its announcement, it suspended 23,686 batches of goods last year, including over 280 million articles that suspected of breaking intellectual property rights (IPR) laws, and actually detained 20,464 batches of goods, including about 76 million articles suspected of IPR infringement.

There are four main characteristics of the infringing articles. Firstly, over 74 million items involved violation of rights to the exclusive use of trademarks, accounting for 98％ of the total. Secondly, most items were detained when exported. In 2013, 19,700 batches of goods were seized as they were being exported, accounting for 96.7% of the total, which involved over 75 million articles, representing 99.4%. Thirdly, the items detained were mostly consumer goods, including tobacco, cosmetics, garments and shoes, ect. Moreover, shipping, postal delivery and express were the main channels of confiscation. In 2013, 96% items were seized by shipping. Meanwhile, 14,000 and 2,226 batches of goods were detained by post and express, accounting for 70.3% and 10.9%.

(China IP News)