IPR protection at Canton Fair creates a fair and just business environment

At the concluding press conference for the 124th Canton Fair, Xu Bing, spokesperson and Deputy Secretary General of Canton Fair, Deputy Director General of China Foreign Trade Centre, introduced the achievements of IPR protection made in this session.

Xu said that after 26 years of improvement, Canton Fair has founded a complete system of IPR protection and trade dispute settlement mechanism for exhibitions, enhanced the awareness of companies on IPR protection and fair and just trade, and demonstrated to the world Chinese government’s position to encourage innovation and protect IPR.

Xu mentioned that at the opening ceremony of BOAO Forum, President Xi listed IPR protection as one of the four measures to pursue further opening up and pointed out that stronger IPR protection is the requirement of foreign enterprises, and even more so of Chinese enterprises. In this session, we will continue to strengthen IPR protection, create an atmosphere of respecting IPR and provide guarantee for innovation and transformation and upgrading.
Crack down upon alleged IPR infringement. We focused on prevention and case handling onsite and cracked down upon alleged infringement. Before the show started, we published notice and requested that all parties should enhance verification of exhibitors’ qualifications, product IPR and quality, so that we could prevent from the source the participation of companies without qualifications and products that may be involved in infringement; we summarized the products and companies that had been complained and needed special attention and reminded then one-to-one. During the show, the Complaint Station enhanced onsite inspection, spotted, handled and punished infringement in a fast manner. The standardized case handling procedures and smooth channel for safeguarding rights have created a just business environment for exhibitors and buyers. More and more exhibitors feel relieved that they can display the latest products and technology.

The number of IPR complaints was decreasing. In this session we handled 382 IPR cases, with 509 exhibitors filed and 264 exhibitors determined as allegedly infringing IPR. According to Complaints about the Settlement Provisions for Suspected IP Infringement in the Canton Fair, exhibitors that were reported twice by trading delegation because of alleged infringement shall be notified in the Canton Fair and their booths shall be reduced. In this session we did not see such punishment occurred.

Awareness of IPR protection of all parties continues to improve. Weeness of IPR proGuangdong Intellectual Property Office and Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration and organized IPR protection forum for the first time, invited experts from the academia and the industry to share how companies should respond to IPR protection against the US China trade frictions and encouraged companies to think deeply about the value of IPR and innovative development. More and more exhibitors realize that it is a must to have valuable IPR and patent for development and that “international pass” should be obtained through IPR.

We created a fair and just trading environment. The Canton Fair Complaint Station handled complaints according to the regulations and strived to determine responsibility and stop the dispute; most people involved in these complaints were satisfied with the results. Travel Sentry of US and ABB of Switzerland gave positive recognition of Canton Fair’s IPR protection in different ways. One Serbian buyer who has attended the show for more than 12 consecutive years mentioned that Canton Fair has attached greater importance to IPR protection; he met nearly 100 Chinese suppliers through the Canton Fair and their strong awareness of IPR protection made him feel relieved about sourcing Chinese products. An Indian buyer said that respect for originality and efforts for innovation have become the mainstream at Canton Fair, which enhanced his will to do business with China in the long term. The strong protection of IPR and effective arbitration of trade disputes at the Fair has ensured the quality of Canton Fair, created a fair and just trading environment and boosted confidence of other countries to engage in economic and trade exchanges with China.

Canton Fair Press Center