Shanghai will take the lead in the country to set up an
intellectual property rights complaint center soon to better help
IPR owners protect their rights, officials revealed yesterday.
The center will accept complaints and transfer cases to relative
administrations. It will also monitor the handling of the
cases.
If a case is delayed, the center will join in to find out the
reason and organize the involved departments to study the case so
that each complaint can be dealt with seriously, said Liu Minhong,
a division chief of the Shanghai Intellectual Property
Administration.
"It will offer more convenience to IPR owners because they can
lodge complaints no matter what. Otherwise, IPR owners must first
know what kind of violations are involved and approach different
departments because each has its own specialty," Liu said.
The channels to accept complaints in different government
agencies are still available and the center will coordinate with
the agencies, officials added.
Meanwhile, the Shanghai Intellectual Property Service Center
yesterday joined hands with the Shanghai Dragon Corp -- a
public-listed company dealing mainly with textiles -- to unveil its
first patent information cooperation center.
"We hope to set up more such cooperation centers with
enterprises," said Li Yaoting, director of the Shanghai
Intellectual Property Service Center.
Such centers will provide patent information to help local
companies, particularly small and medium-sized units which do not
have the resources to have their own IPR units, officials said.
Li said the new center will provide free, timely and specific
international patent information to Shanghai Dragon, adding that
local firms can also apply to establish such patent information
relationship with the center.
Last year, the local industrial and commercial administration
dealt with 652 cases of foreign trademark violations, accounting
for 58.8 percent of the total trademark infringement cases in the
city, according to official statistics released at an annual
meeting yesterday to report local IPR protection achievements to
foreign consulates and enterprises.
(Shanghai Daily April 26, 2006)