China cracked down on 2,451 infringement cases involving foreign trademarks in the first half of 2005, up 55.8 percent over the same period last year, said Li Dongsheng, deputy director of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (AIC), Monday.
  
In 2004, China cracked down on 5,401 such infringement cases, up 158 percent from the pervious year, he said.
  
This shows that China has improved the protection of foreign trademarks, Li said at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office.
  
In the second half of 2004, China launched a campaign to protect the exclusive right to use registered trademarks, focusing on protecting well-known trademarks, foreign-related trademarks and trademarks used on food and drugs.
  
During the first half year of 2005, China discovered 18,130 trademark infringement and counterfeiting cases in total, up 13.4 percent year-on-year. While the figure in 2004 was 40,171, up 51.66 percent year-on-year.
  
At the end of 2004, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate jointly released the Interpretation on Issues on Application of Law for Trial of IPR (Intellectual property rights) criminal Cases, and strengthened the protection of intellectual property against criminal  cases.
  
After that, the administrations of industry and commerce throughout the country have handed to police 88 suspects in the trademark infringement cases from January to June, 2.3 times that of the same period last year.
  
Li said China has an accumulated number of 2.37 million registered trademarks by the end of this June, among which foreign trademarks reached 422,000 from 129 countries and areas.
  
This demonstrated China has a comprehensive and sound trademark system, China's protection of the exclusive right to use a registered trademark is effective and foreign investors have strong confidence in China's market environment, he said.
  
In 1983, China's annual trademark applications for registration was less than 20,000 and among which only 1,687 were foreign applications. By 2004, the number of annual applications had reached 588,000, ranking among the top list of the world for three consecutive years.
  
Out of the annual applications, 60,000 were foreign trademarks, and the United States, Japan and Germany ranked first, second and third in the number of trademark applications, with 13,343, 11,945 and 5,961 applications, respectively.
  
In the special campaign, protection of well-known trademarks has been one of the top priorities for AICs at all levels, and the protection has been increasingly strengthened, Li said.
  
This has improved the confidence of foreign companies, especially multinational companies, in China's IPR protection. 

(Xinhua News Agency July 12, 2005)