The 104th China Import and Export Fair (Canton Fair) concludes in Guangzhou on November 6. Guangdong IP Administration organizes a joint law-enforcement team, consisting more than 50 people from 10 city-level IP administrations such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Foshan to the Fair to closely cooperate with the seven chambers of commerce and associations so as to strengthen IPR protection, achieving sound results.

During the three phases of Canton Fair, a total of 645 complaints of suspected right infringements are reported against 911 enterprises, of which, 495 have been affirmed to have infringed rights, up 25.2 percent, 39.1 percent and 9.4 percent compared with Canton Fair of the last term respectively. The numbers of complaints of patent, trademark and copyright respectively reach 473, 128 and 44, accounting for 73.3 percent, 19.8 percent and 6.8 percent of the total. Foreign-related complaints increase greatly, with 62 such complaints received in the first phase, increasing 21.6 percent over the last fair, which are 51. Right holders are mainly from Japan, France, the United States and Germany in the fields of household appliance, electronic consumer products and lighting products.

Three major characteristics can be found at the 104th China Import and Export Fair.

First, strengthen the organization and leadership to protect IPRs in a unified and order way. Regarding the new features of "new exhibition time", "new exhibition halls", "new mechanisms" and "new personnel" of the Fair of this term, Guangdong IP Administration establishes a working group stationed at the Fair and appoints people with abundant law-enforcement experience to various exhibition halls.

Second, give full play to the roles of trade delegations so as to make joint efforts in IPR protection. Canton Fair continues to require various trade delegations and chambers of commerce to strengthen the inspection upon the qualification and exhibition items of participating enterprises and do a good job in putting IPRs in records. It also signs agreements with all the participating enterprises via trade delegation and list the responsibility of IPR protection into the letters of liability of using the exhibition stalls of Canton Fair. For complaints with comparatively wide influences, the chambers of commerce or trade delegations, under the guidance of law enforcers, first conduct self-rectification for the items suspected of infringing rights; then, related enterprises remove the right infringing products out of the fair or reach agreements with complainers; for complicated cases, the trade delegations or chambers of commerce, which the enterprises suspected of infringing rights belong to, should appoint special people to assist the IPR complaint center to deal with the complaints.

Third, pragmatically strengthen administration to ensure high efficiency of IPR protection. At the Fair, Guangdong IP Administration further standardizes its case handling procedures and unifies its case handling norms and file administration, making various works more systematic, standardized and efficient. It also makes great efforts to deal with malicious right infringements and important and difficult cases to pragmatically protect patentees' rights and interests and trade orders of the Fair.

From the beginning of 104th Canton Fair, Ministry of Commerce conducts important reform and adjustment to the exhibition system, modes and functions of various parties of the Fair. The work of IPR complaint center is also shifted from China Foreign Trade Center to seven chambers of commerce and associations such as China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Textiles. Meanwhile, three phases of exhibition are held in A, B and C areas of Pazhou Exhibition Hall for the first time.