Chinese Mandarin - US,China customs boost collaboration on IPR

BIZCHINA / Center

US,China customs boost collaboration on IPR

By Zhu Zhe (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-06-16 06:42

Customs in China and the United States will regularly inform each other
of the seizures of pirated products and enforcement actions, the head of
the US customs agency said in Beijing on Friday.

In a new effort to fight intellectual property rights (IPR) violations,
the two countries have signed a memorandum of understanding and agreed to
exchange statistics on seizures of counterfeits, according to Ralph
Basham, Commissioner for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The statistics will include the number of seizures, quantity and value of
goods, transportation type and the main ports of transit used.

In response, the receiving side should report the enforcement actions to
the other side within 90 days.

Basham said he hoped the agreement, signed late last month in Washington
DC, would help curb counterfeiting.

CBP figures show IPR violation shipments seized at US ports in 2005 were
up 125 percent over that in 2001.

Last year, the US customs seized about 14,775 shipments of counterfeits
originating from China, Basham said.

"We've got to start dealing with the source of the problem. We can't
expect to rely on interdiction to be our tool in order to stop these IPR
violations," he said.

Mu Xinsheng, head of China's General Administration of Customs (GAC),
said the agreement would lead to more effective IPR enforcement in both
countries.

He said in a recent interview that the US has regularly criticized China
for alleged failure to prevent IPR infringements, while refusing to
provide enough information about seizures of pirated products.

He said piracy and counterfeiting are global problems, and cooperation
among countries is a better way to resolve disputes than confrontation.

Official figures show that Chinese customs cracked 2,473 IPR infringement
cases last year, or double the number in 2005. About 200 million pirated
or counterfeit goods were seized during the period.

During his stay in Beijing this week, Basham also met with Chinese police
authorities.

He said cooperation could include introducing China to a US program used
at several foreign airports to identify travelers who might be barred
from the US.

Another senior CBP official, Michael Mullen, said the US also plans to
have more terminals under its Container Security Initiative at the
Chinese port of Shenzhen to check and identify high-risk cargo destined
for the US. He did not elaborate.

He said the two Chinese ports currently under the initiative, Shenzhen
and Shanghai, accounts for about 20 percent of the global exports to the
US.

(China Daily 06/16/2007 page1)

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