The General Administration of Customs(GAC) recently released figures about the customs supervision and services and growth of foreign trade. The figure showed that in recent years the amount of IP infringement cases investigated by Customs has maintained an annual growth rate of 30%.
Since the customs started to enforce IP in 1994, there have been a growth of 30 percent in terms of the IP infringement cases in import and export from 1995 to 2010. In addition, Chinese customs strengthened the cooperation with customs in other countries in protecting the IP arcoss border. Memorandums of cooperation on the protection of intellectual property were signed with the United States, European Union, Russia and Japan.
Due to its continuous efforts in protecting the IP, GAC received “The Special Contribution Award for combating counterfeiting and piracy” from the World Customs Organization in 2007 and “The Best Governmental Institute against Counterfeiting” from the Global Anti-Counterfeiting Group (GACG) in 2006 and 2011 respectively. GAC is said to be the only government agency for such award this year. It is learned that GAC will maintain its force against the illegal activities such as IP infringement and counterfeiting activities by strengthening cooperation with international and domestic related departments.
