Like most other American women, I’ll admit that I have a few knock-off designer purses. However, at the risk of sounding like a hippocrite, I’m going to write this anyway…
As a recent article from The Economist, entitled “Handbags at Dawn” explains,
court action brought in China by Louis Vuitton, a French luxury-goods firm, against Carrefour, a French retailer, highlights the continuing battle against intellectual property violation in China and elsewhere. News emerged on April 20th that Carrefour would have to pay 3m yuan ($375,000) to Louis Vuitton. That sum would only buy you an armful of luxury accessories, but it shows that China’s courts may be beginning to take the problem seriously.
I visited China about a year ago, and can tell you that the conterfeiting problem in China goes beyond handbags…one company I visited makes icing for cakes (a rather new phenomenon in China), and even they were feeling the effects of the lack of respect for intellectual property rights. Yes, in China they are counterfeiting icing…selling an inferior product in this company’s packaging.
As the article explains,
Not only do clothes, accessories, CDs and blockbuster movies fall victim to the counterfeiters’ art, but goods such as drugs, computer software, training shoes, golf clubs, cigarettes and even chewing gum are prey to fakers.
Hu Jintao, China’s president, acknowledged the severity of the problem during his current visit to America by dropping in on Bill Gates of Microsoft. Mr Hu said he was a “friend” of Microsoft and reportedly promised intensified action against software pirates in his country.
This is definitely a story to keep abreast of, not only will it have a great impact on a variety of industries suffering from Chinese counterfeiters, we can only hope that this may also reflect changes in the Chinese government.