The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) Wednesday pledged to work harder alongside the relevant authorities to protect the intellectual property rights of the 2008 Olympic Games logo.

Since the logo was launched on August 3, some T-shirts using the logo without the committee's authorization have been found in Beijing, according to sources with the Beijing Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce.

Liu Yan, vice-director of the committee's legal affairs department, told a press conference Wednesday: "We will continue to assist the industry and commerce authorities and the customs authorities to seize unauthorized goods that are using the Olympic emblem illegally."

Sources said that, by Tuesday, Beijing's market watchdog had seized 134 items of clothing that were illegally using the emblem in Beijing clothes markets such as the Xiushui or Silk Market. The goods were confiscated and fines of up to five times the illegal income were collected.

The organizing committee said 58,000 authorized T-shirts have been produced since August 3 for the Beijing market but no sales figures were available.

The local industry and commerce authorities will carry out special inspections this week of shops, printing companies, tourist sites and advertisements in an attempt to protect the logo's intellectual property rights.

The organizing committee announced early this month that no organization could use the logo for business purposes without the committee's permission.

The committee registered the Olympic logo as a trademark on the Chinese mainland in May and in the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions earlier this month.

The International Olympic Committee - the final owner of the logo's property rights - has registered the logo in all other parts of the world.

Liu from the committee's legal affairs department said: "BOCOG will determine the liability of those who violate the logo's intellectual property rights in those regions (outside the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao) jointly with the IOC."

At Wednesday’s press conference, Yuan Bin, BOCOG's deputy chief of marketing, said the committee will promote a greater variety of souvenirs with the Olympic logo in addition to the current array of stamps, souvenir badges, T-shirts and maps, which have been sold in limited quantities since August 3 and have had a very good market response.

(China Daily August 14, 2003)