The National Office of Rectification and Standardization of Market Economic Order held its second meeting over the weekend in Beijing, hearing opinions on intellectual property protection and activities against piracy and counterfeiting from foreign-invested firms in China.

The meeting was held under the co-ordination mechanism for foreign-invested companies, which was established by the office on September 24 when the first meeting opened.

Under the mechanism, the office will hold such meetings on the first week of each March, June, September and December.

Representatives from 80 foreign-invested companies attended the meeting to give their comments on China's efforts with the anti-counterfeiting campaigns, and to give suggestions for further protecting market order.

Li Jingzhou, on behalf of the Information Technology Group of the Quality Brands Protection Committee, said the rise of counterfeiting and piracy involves many factors. A major reason is that administration departments have not imposed higher fines on those involved in selling illegal goods.

The committee, set up in 2000, consists of 83 famous foreign companies in China, such as Nokia and Microsoft, and is aimed at helping supervise anti-counterfeiting activities.

Li suggested that enforcement departments must enforce serious punishments and heavy fines over trademark infringement and those doing business without licenses.

Yuan Ming, an official of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, said departments across the country are willing to work with foreign-invested companies to fight against counterfeiting and piracy.

The General Administration of Quality, Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine has taken some measures to help slash counterfeiting activities. To prevent forged products from being exported to other countries, for example, the administration and the General Administration of Customs have designated major ports for foreign-invested companies to export their high quality products, according to administration official Gao Jianhua.

Zhang Zhigang, vice-minister of commerce, said relevant governmental departments should give prominence to reasonable opinions from foreign-invested companies. He said that starting next year, administrative, judicial, industrial and commercial departments will jointly tighten enforcement nationwide to further eliminate counterfeiting and piracy activities.

Eight ministry-level departments have launched a yearlong nationwide crackdown on counterfeit products and piracy since early this year.

Law enforcement and quality-supervision departments are the major forces in the campaign.

(China Daily December 15, 2003)