(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-03-29 21:50

Qiao Gangliang, vice-president of the UK-based General Electric (GE) Healthcare, was surprised to see his company win a trade secret and copyright infringement case in China within eight months last year.

"It was much faster than I had expected," said Qiao, who compared the efficiency with that in the United States where he had worked as a law clerk. "As I understand, it usually takes two to three years in the United States. "

The case, together with 11 other foreign-related cases, won Best Cases of IPR Protection for 2007-2008, a yearly award granted by the Quality Brands Protection Committee (QBPC) under the China Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment (CAEFI), in Beijing on Friday.

Representatives from major foreign-invested firms and intellectual property rights (IPR) protection experts told Xinhua they felt China's judicial and law enforcement environment had made great progress, but remained to be done.

"These examples of good investigative practice set a worldwide example for other investigators to follow," said John Newton, intellectual property program manager of the International Criminal Police Organization, at the award ceremony.

"Many foreign companies were impressed by the efficiency and transparency of our case," said Qiao. "It surprised those who had misgivings about China's IPR protection that we won a suit here and secured our damages of 900,000 yuan (US$128,320)."

The value of counterfeit goods involved in other awarded cases varied from 290,000 to 7.85 million yuan.

Michael Barbalas, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, said he saw progress every year in China's efforts to combat fake goods. "We had a survey among our member companies recently and they said generally the legal structure is getting better in China."

Rapid moves and effective cooperation between administrative forces and judicial agencies were most frequently mentioned when the cases were introduced at the ceremony by the QBPC member companies, including Cisco, Nike, Motorola, Sony, and Procter & Gamble.

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