On March 29, the Quality Brands Protection Committee of China Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment (QBPC) Luxury Goods IWG held the first offline IWG lunch meeting this year. The meeting was chaired by IWG coordinator Miller Wang of MCM. Lawyer James Luo from Beijing Roger Law firm was invited to attend the meeting as the speaker. 25 representatives of 18 member companies attended the event.
Miller Wang first introduced the "Hainan Free Trade Port Luxury Brands Promotion Conference”, which was scheduled on May 2023, and brainstormed and exchanged views with other participants. The activity was divided into three parts including in-depth exchanges with the local customs, municipal market supervision authority, and courts and procuratorates in Hainan. Through customs training, duty-free area visits, award-winning quiz, identification and display of genuine and fake products, the activity aimed at assisting luxury brands to actively and effectively enhance crackdown and treatment on counterfeits in Hainan Island.
Subsequently, with regard to the case of Shandong Qingdao "4.12" case of manufacturing and selling counterfeit luxury goods, which was jointly nominated by Burberry Limited, Kering Investment Management Group Co., Ltd, Trias Holding AG and Coach Shanghai Limited to 2022-2023 Top Ten Case, Mengfan Zhang from Coach and Miller Wang jointly introduced the basic information and highlights of the case.
Then, James Luo discussed the draft (for public comments) Explanations on Several Issues Regarding the Application of Laws in Handling Criminal Cases of Intellectual Property Infringement by the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) and Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP). He suggested that, in order to further strengthen the protection of well-known trademarks, it could be added in Article 1 that “In terms of counterfeiting well-known trademark, with illegal gains over RMB 20,000 or sales revenue over RMB 30,000.” In addition, he believed that administrative responsibility and criminal responsibility belong to different levels of responsibility. Regarding a case already punished by the administration, relevant sales revenue should be calculated cumulatively with that from new counterfeiting act by the same business owner. Meanwhile, after the infringer had held liable in civil cases, it should be made clear that illegal sales revenue should be calculated cumulatively with that from new counterfeit act. Lawyer Luo suggested that the IWG try to join forces with other industry groups to provide supplementary suggestions on this issue to SPC and SPP through the QBPC platform.
At the end of the meeting, Miller Wang once again expressed his gratitude to all the speakers and delegates as well as looked forward to the next activity of IWG.