The country has taken strict, comprehensive measures to protect Olympic intellectual property, he said.

"We are making special efforts to prevent unlicensed use of Olympic-related logos and other property ahead of the Beijing Games.

"The government has the resolve and capability to make sure that during the Olympic Games we have a favorable climate for intellectual property," Yin said.

Xu Chao, vice-director of the copyright department of the National Copyright Administration, also spoke at the conference.

"In recent years, we have come across some difficulties in copyright protection, and we have been adopting various measures," he said.

It is often difficult to shut down shops selling pirated products, he said.

"Many malls let out counters, and each counter is run independently.

"If they do something illegal, you would have to shut down the entire mall," he said.

The efforts of customs, public security and cultural departments in tackling infringement of intellectual property rights achieved remarkable results last year, he said.

Some 2,967 people were arrested for suspected IPR violations and public security departments investigated 2,283 cases of IPR infringement, involving 1.49 billion yuan ($213 million).

Courts around the country dealt with 2,684 cases involving 4,328 people, and 4,322 were found guilty.

(China Daily April 18, 2008)