Recently, the Status of Intellectual Property Protection by Customs in 2014 (hereinafter the Report) was released by General Administration for Customs. It is noted that over 27,000 measures were taken to protect IP and about 24,000 batches of goods suspicious of infringement were seized which involved nearly 92 million pieces of goods.
Of all the suspicious infringement goods confiscated, 23,000 batches of goods were confiscated on the initiatives of the customs, involving over 90 million pieces of goods. Though the infringement covers patent, trademark, copyright and related rights, a majority of the infringement was related to the trademark rights, accounting for more than 96% of all confiscated goods. Additionally, the customs paid more attention to the export channel, in particular the export of consumer goods, and more than 91 million goods were confiscated.
It is indicated that China also paid close attention to the domestic intellectual property right through customs. In 2014, the customs in China confiscated 514 batches of products involving more than 12 million pieces of goods suspicious of infringement on domestic IP rights.
