Good Policy: How To Protect The Intellectual Property Of China'S Textile Industry

Recently, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the outline of building a powerful intellectual property country (2021-2035), which depicts a grand blueprint for China to accelerate the construction of a powerful intellectual property country. China has changed from a big country of importing intellectual property rights to a big country of creating intellectual property rights, and the work of intellectual property rights has changed from pursuing quantity to improving quality. The outline requires that by 2025, the construction of a powerful country with intellectual property rights will achieve remarkable results; By 2035, the comprehensive competitiveness of intellectual property will be in the forefront of the world, and a powerful intellectual property country with Chinese characteristics and world level will be basically completed.

With the growing strength of China's textile industry, intellectual property has become an important part of the industry's scientific and technological innovation and brand building. China's textiles have to face the increasingly fierce competition of intellectual property protection. Developed countries and multinational companies often file disputes and lawsuits on intellectual property rights of textiles, and domestic textile enterprises are greatly impacted. According to statistics, since China's accession to the WTO, Chinese enterprises have encountered major international patent disputes, with more than 20 lawsuits and more than US $1 billion in compensation. China's textile industry has also taken action for a long time. The China Textile Industry Federation has established an intellectual property alliance, established an intellectual property innovation exchange platform, and promoted the deep integration of intellectual property and industry. Keqiao and Nantong, two important textile towns, have also cooperated with the government and enterprises in recent years to strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights, providing valuable experience for the industry.

　　 The first textile "fast maintenance center" opened

Recently, China's Shaoxing Keqiao (Textile) intellectual property rapid protection center passed the acceptance of the State Intellectual Property Office, and the country's first rapid intellectual property rights protection center for textile industry was put into use.

As the core node of textile industry chain in Textile City, pattern design has always been the top priority of creative industry. In the process of building "International Textile City" at a high level, the cultivation and protection of intellectual property rights will be more and more important to promote the unique advantages of "industry + market". In April 2020, Keqiao District applied to the State Intellectual Property Office for the establishment of Keqiao "fast maintenance center". In October of the same year, it was officially approved by the State Intellectual Property Office.

As an important window for the State Intellectual Property Office to serve Keqiao Textile Industry and a powerful hand for Keqiao district market supervision bureau to carry out intellectual property work, after putting into use, Keqiao "fast maintenance center" will closely focus on the positioning and demand of Keqiao Textile Industry, play a leading role in intellectual property such as patents, trademarks, copyrights, etc., and provide a set of patents, trademarks, copyrights, etc We will start the digital reform of intellectual property protection in the textile industry, build the scene application of "pattern number management" in textile industry, and explore and solve the problems of intellectual property rights confirmation, protection and utilization. In particular, the patent examination and authorization of design and utility model are accelerated, and the authorization time is shortened from 6 months to 7 days, realizing the "acceleration" of patent authorization in Keqiao district. At the same time, the center has also introduced a number of intellectual property public service institutions and market-oriented service institutions to provide enterprises with intellectual property pledge financing, intellectual property trusteeship and other services, so as to realize multi-functional cross level, cross department and cross category "one-stop" processing.

In recent years, the market supervision bureau of Keqiao District of Shaoxing City has insisted on the implementation of intellectual property strategy as an important support for promoting high-quality economic and social development, and has established a regional innovation system with enterprises as the main body and market as the guidance. Last year, we developed the first China textile fabric pattern copyright data center and AI comparison system in China, established a digital "household registration" for textile pattern registration in the province, and carried out "household registration" management. The first "fast maintenance center" of China's textile industry will further open up the whole chain of intellectual property creation, application, protection, management and service, and help the high-quality development of the textile industry.

　　 To protect the cloth is to protect innovation

To protect intellectual property is to protect innovation. Nantong as a home textile town, the core part of the industry is fabric and style design, which is the creation of intellectual property rights. However, driven by interests, choosing piracy was once a "routine action" of businesses. In the 1980s and 1990s, Nantong home textile market was in the initial stage, and there was only one market formed by more than 100 individual small cloth shops. There is no copyright concept of cloth vendors competing to copy, low-quality and cheap pirated calico flooded the market. "It costs 12000 yuan to develop a new flower, but only 3000 or 4000 yuan for piracy..." when it comes to the reason for copyright protection, many local insiders recall this widely circulated past.

Continuous plagiarism not only makes home textile products more and more homogeneous, but also leads to vicious competition. In order to promote the sound development of home textile industry, a series of intellectual property protection measures have been taken, and the operators' awareness of intellectual property rights is becoming stronger and stronger.

In March 1997, Zhihao market copyright management office, the first township and village level copyright management organization in China, was established. In January 2013, home textile city applied for the establishment of a rapid rights protection center and was approved. In January 2014, the center was connected with the State Intellectual Property Office for trial operation.

Behind the easy infringement of home textile industry, the protection of rights has become a difficult problem. The traditional relief mechanism, such as administrative approach, is relatively slow, and judicial approach is also time-consuming and costly. Therefore, home textile enterprises have been faced with the problems of long relief cycle, high cost and difficulty. The rapid protection mechanism of home textile can improve the efficiency of rights protection and effectively stop the infringement. Through the collaborative governance of the Internet industry belt and the linkage between the Internet platform and the local intellectual property protection center, the processing efficiency of patent protection cases has been improved.

In order to strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights in the field of e-commerce, Kuaiwei center has established an entrustment mechanism for handling online intellectual property infringement cases, and cooperated with Alibaba to carry out projects such as handing over processing and infringement judgment of e-commerce patent infringement cases. In 2020, the center accepted 503 Cases of design patent infringement, including 470 cases in the field of e-commerce.

　　 The healthy development of fashion industry needs intellectual property protection

Intellectual property, which is connected with innovation and market at one end, is an important bridge and link for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements into real productivity. In the fashion field with original design as the core competitiveness, the protection of intellectual property rights determines the establishment of Chinese fashion discourse right to a certain extent, and its importance is self-evident. On September 12, 2021 China Fashion intellectual property conference was held in Beijing.

According to the report released at the meeting, China's large-scale garment enterprises have a relatively complete awareness and system of intellectual property protection, but there is still a certain gap between large-scale clothing enterprises and foreign famous brands in terms of overseas intellectual property distribution. In terms of domestic intellectual property layout and protection awareness, small and medium-sized garment enterprises have a certain gap, There is a big gap between China's large clothing enterprises and foreign famous brands. 　

Peng Ming, chairman of the intellectual property forum of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, said in an interview that with the expansion of the fast fashion market in recent years, the phenomenon of plagiarism is still obvious. "Buyers of fast fashion brands will appear at fashion conferences for the first time and record styles. However, it is difficult to judge between reference and plagiarism in the clothing industry, so this has always been a pain point in the industry."

Li Lingshen, vice president of the China Textile Industry Federation, disclosed at the China Fashion intellectual property conference that in 2020, the design patents of the textile and clothing industry accounted for 5.9% of all the design patents in China, and the number showed a downward trend in the past five years; Since 2013, the State Intellectual Property Office has organized and carried out the cultivation of national intellectual property advantage demonstration enterprises. 28 enterprises in the field of textile and clothing have been shortlisted, accounting for 2.9%, which has effectively promoted the improvement of the strategic management, output, international operation and risk control capabilities of the textile and garment industry. It is pointed out that the protection of intellectual property rights is an important guarantee to shorten the gap between China and developed countries. Whether the international intellectual property protection barrier environment or the domestic intellectual property protection trend brings new opportunities and challenges to the fashion industry.

In order to strengthen the intellectual property protection of fashion industry, the fashion intellectual property protection platform established by China Fashion intellectual property protection center has provided a one-stop copyright problem solution for registered users since it was launched online, which fundamentally helps fashion practitioners solve the problem of original proof, and protects the interests of creators and increases the infringement cost of infringers to the greatest extent, Gradually establish the whole industry respect intellectual property rights, respect the original industry ecology.

　　 Strengthening self-protection awareness of enterprises

Nowadays, the "protection network" of textile intellectual property rights is being further consolidated, and the textile and garment industry is also forming a good atmosphere of strict intellectual property protection, and the confidence of enterprises in technological innovation and brand building is more sufficient.

Ruyi, a leading enterprise in the industry, has formed an efficient patent management process through the establishment of "intellectual property affairs department". Through the establishment of closed-loop intellectual property control system, the patent quality is guaranteed. Patent protection covers the whole life cycle of the project from product development to later stage. The integrated development of patent layout and enterprise operation involves the whole process of R & D, production, publicity, procurement, sales and after-sales. Patent protection of core technologies is carried out in Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea.

At present, some enterprises engaged in intellectual property protection are also helping the textile and garment industry to upgrade the protection of intellectual property. Zhongxiruan group, a famous intellectual property enterprise located in Zhangjiagang, focuses on providing services in intellectual property technology, intellectual property trading, intellectual property finance, intellectual property securitization, etc., and is becoming the largest and influential intellectual property innovation center in the world. The group also set up the Sinosoft intellectual property science and Technology Museum, which is divided into intellectual property library, intellectual property digital exhibition hall, intellectual property Museum, good invention coffee and intellectual property Theme Conference Center, collecting 1260 pieces of cultural relics of various intellectual property elements.

Li Lingshen, vice president of China Textile Industry Federation, stressed that intellectual property has become a strategic resource. With the change of international situation, the learning cost of the industry is higher and higher, and the opportunities of introducing, digesting, absorbing and re innovating are less and less. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the awareness of independent innovation in the whole industry and turn the protection of intellectual property rights into conscious actions. We should vigorously publicize and protect intellectual property rights and form a climate of respecting intellectual property rights. With the growing strength of China's textile industry, intellectual property has become an important part of the industry's scientific and technological innovation. The textile industry needs to promote the development of the industry with high quality through the research on intellectual property.

(source: China Textile)