Zhejiang Print Fabric Copyright Alliance celebrates its first anniversary
2009/06/17
China Textile City had led the national trend in the design of patterns of print fabric, but its patterns which cost a large sum of money on research and development had been frequently plagiarized.
Therefore, last year, 73 leading manufacturers and business operators in China Textile City founded the Zhejiang Print Fabric Copyright Alliance to declare war on piracy.
On June 13, at its first anniversary, the Alliance held a general assembly and invited principals from National Copyright Administration, National Copyright Protection Center, and Zhejiang and Jiangsu Provincial Copyright Offices.
It was learnt that, since its establishment for one year, the Alliance has behaved as an agency in coordinating and lodging judicial lawsuits for infringements happened in different places, dealing with 21 infringing cases in total, recovering the economic loss of 3 million yuan, and building up a favorable environment for the R&D of print fabric patterns.
Nowadays, some leading enterprises issue 100-200 new patterns every spring and autumn, over 5,000 new patterns created by members of the Alliance each year.
This move gained appreciation from heads of Zhejiang Province Copyright Office. They considered that this approach can effectively curb piracy, so as to empower creators in enhancing product quality.
However, as a non-governmental organization, the Alliance is limited to voluntary mediation of two parties of the case when handling complaints. Therefore, how to gain supports from local administrative, judicial and other related organs also needs further exploration. In addition, many underground piracy activities can not be effectively checked, for this reason, as for the copyright protection of print fabric, the Alliance still has a long way to go.
Source: IPR in China
