On July 20, the Quality Brands Protection Committee of China Association of Enterprise with Foreign Investment (QBPC) Luxury Goods IWG held the first Online and offline participation IP protection salon in 2022. The conference was presided over by Miller Wang, coordinator of the Luxury Goods IWG, and Kyle Zhu from MCM Company was responsible for contacting members and onsite support. The event was attended by 30 representatives from 19 member companies. At the meeting, some member representatives shared their recent IP protection experience, proposed a joint visit to the Hainan customs by the industry, and discussed the topics of common concern to members, such as the impact of personal information protection on the storage of case information.
Before the official start of the meeting, Miller Wang greeted the offline and online participants (from Hong Kong and Guangzhou) and thanked everyone for their enthusiastic participation. After all members introduced themselves one by one, the salon officially began.
The first speaker was Jayden You of Kering who shared a case of the manufacture and sale of counterfeit Gucci registered trademarks by a super-large cross-regional criminal gangs. He introduced in detail the process of the case from the discovery of clues to the joint data research and judgment by the police, platform and right holder, and then to the successful raid on the whole chain from online to offline and across regions. In addition, in this case, the court regarded the " amount of illegal gains" as the "sales amount" when determining the value of the crime, which was undoubtedly a positive signal that the judicial organs would continue to maintain high pressure on the crime of IPR infringement before the relevant judicial interpretations are promulgated. Finally, he also shared the difficulties including customs warehousing and destruction costs, and seizure of information on cases of relatively large value. He looked forward to the co-governance of the industry.
The second topic was about Hainan Free Trade Port. According to Miller Wang, Hainan Province was another region with an intellectual property court in addition to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, which played a good role in promoting the protection of intellectual property rights of luxury brands. Therefore, the Luxury Goods IWG would continue to pay attention to Hainan's new policies and organize offline Customs training, market cleaning and other activities whenever possible.
Cinson Zhang, Burberry representative, then shared his experience of raiding on copycat brands. He analyzed the case of a clothing company in Shenzhen counterfeiting the registered trademark "Burberry" as an example, introduced the background of the case, the main right protection actions and effects, the choice of right approaches, and the advantages of handling the copycat brands through criminal cases. In conclusion, he believed that compared with other right protection methods, the application of criminal enforcement in treating copycat brands was more deterrent, more efficient and more thorough, which could save the cost of handling cases to a certain extent, provide more options for solving complex problems in one case, and encourage the right holders facing the same dilemma to seek new approaches and best solutions meeting their needs.
Niklas Fu, Richemont representative, expressed his views on the impact of personal information protection on the storage of case information. Under the dual supervision of the Personal Information Protection Law and the Network Data Security Law, the right protection work of foreign-funded enterprises had ushered in more challenges, and the storage and sharing of case information faced more complex compliance processing, which was also a common problem. It was urgent to find better solutions.
Peter Chong, Louis Vuitton representative, shared a counterfeit infringement case on the Pinduoduo e-commerce platform. He said that it was relatively difficult to obtain the information related to the counterfeit shops from the platforms. A possible solution was to obtain the information through means such as express delivery information and store registration information upon the notarization of the test purchase, and then resort to civil litigation. He suggested that in the process of safeguarding rights, the right holders should make more attempts, accumulate experience, and remain careful and patient when encountering obstacles, and would finally find a solution.
During the event, Miller Wang actively promoted online and offline interaction while the participants enthusiastically got involved in the discussion. At the end of the meeting, Miller Wang once again thanked the speakers and participants, and hoped everyone to look forward to the next activity of the IWG.