Society

Chinese city becomes pilot for copyright protection

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-02-25 10:50

NANJING: The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is expected to publish a copyright protection report on home textile by east China's Nantong city before the end of March, said a senior intellectual property official here on Wednesday.

Xu Yiying, director of the Jiangsu Provincial Intellectual Property Bureau, said this would be the first time that WIPO published an industry report to showcase a regional copyright protection example.

Nantong, seated on the northern bank of China's Yangtze River, has become the world's third largest home textile production center. Two major home textile markets in the city achieved a revenue of over 100 billion yuan ($14.6 billion) in 2009.

Dimiter Gantchev, head of Creation Development at WIPO, said Nantong's home textile market was a good example of China's copyright protection.

Gantchev represented WIPO in signing an accord recognizing Nantong's home textile copyright protection as a pilot investigation program of WIPO's outstanding copyright case on March 26.

He said in the process of developing a home textile industry, all levels of local governments had paid a great deal of attention to ensure copyright protection.

Nantong now has over 50 private pattern design offices, developing thousands of new textile patterns each year.

Lu Xingsheng, an official with the intellectual property bureau, said copyright piracy was rampant in Nantong's textile industry in 1990s. The township government in Chuangang, which administrates the Zhihao Home Textile Market in Nantong, set up the country's first copyright management organization to deal with copyright disputes among textile producers in 1997.

The organization's supervision has helped improve copyright protection awareness among textile entrepreneurs, most of whom were farmers, he said.

The neighboring township of Sanxing followed suit to set up another copyright management office in 2002 to help mediate copyright infringement cases.

"The organizations have been considered by WIPO as a case of Chinese innovation. They are run by government and play a social services role for textile businessmen," he said.