Nantong - The city's self-developed efforts to protect intellectual property in household textiles have resulted in the first-ever World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) report devoted to an industry in a single nation.

 

The study will likely be released next month, a senior intellectual property official told China Daily yesterday.

Printed in both English and Chinese, the case study of intellectual property practices in Nantong, Jiangsu province provides a blueprint for other developing countries to protect local producers, said Gu Xiang, director of the city's Copyright Management Office.

Nantong's two major local textile markets - Zhihao and Dieshiqiao - selling household fabrics generated nearly 100 billion yuan in sales last year. The city on the Yangtze River Delta is now the world's third-largest household textile production center after New York City and Frankfurt, Germany.

"Continuing improvement in intellectual property protection is the most important reason for today's achievements in the sector," said Zhang Xiaoping, head of the city government's publicity department.

The now-model city was once troubled with rampant textile piracy in the 1990s. It was a common practice for locals to copy designs due to weak intellectual property awareness.

To battle the problem the town government of Chuangang, home to Zhihao market, set up a copyright management office in 1997 in the market itself, the first of its kind in the country.

Because many local textile producers rent booths in the market, the government moved inside Zhihao to deal with disputes - and it certainly improved copyright awareness, Gu said.

Yuan Hongbin, a cloth merchant once investigated for infringement, met with piracy himself when his company launched a textile lineup with new designs.

"Thanks to copyright registration, our interests are protected," Yuan said.

With annual sales of more than 100 million yuan, the company is now the largest copyright owner of local fabric patterns.

The neighboring township of Sanxing, which administrates Dieshiqiao market, followed suit to set up a copyright management there in 2002.

"Those government-run organizations are considered by WIPO to be a case of Chinese innovation." Gu said.

The market-based offices registered more than 25,200 copyrights by the end 2009. Since they began operation, the offices have dealt with more than 1,600 copyright disputes, about 1,500 of which have been settled. In total they have seized more than 3.3 million meters of illegal fabric and imposed more than 8.4 million yuan in combined compensation.

If parties in a dispute are dissatisfied with mediation by the offices, they can appeal to the Nantong intellectual property tribunal established at the markets in 2008. It deals exclusively with copyright disputes in household textiles.

The tribunal can hold on-the-spot hearings at the request of parties involved, according to Gu.

He noted a special tribunal within a market is not only unprecedented in China but rare worldwide.

Because infringement evidence can easily vanish before investigation, the tribunal established a rapid response mechanism to provide quick judicial protection for textile entrepreneurs, Gu said.

By the end of 2009, the tribunal had accepted 232 cases, 223 of which were adjudicated, with 5.56 million yuan in compensation levied.

"The combination of administrative and legal proceedings enabled copyright protection to achieve the best results," said Gu.

Nantong now has more than 50 private design offices that develop thousands of new textile patterns each year.

The city's fabric markets are now home to 11 national inspection-free products, five Chinese famous brands and three well-known trademarks. Its entrepreneurs have applied for 157 trademarks and 898 patents, 369 of which have been authorized, according to Zhang Biao, director of Nantong Municipal Intellectual Property Office.

The city won the WIPO Copyright Creative Award in 2008 for its efforts.

Nantong's household textile market is a good example for China's copyright protection, said Dimiter Gantchev, head of Creation Development at WIPO.

Last year the Jiangsu Provincial Copyright Bureau formally submitted a report to the WIPO that covers the many aspects of the program.

 

(Source: China Daily)

2013-07-17