On August 31, Mr. Zhang Mao, minister of SAIC met with the visiting Italian Ambassador Mr. Ettore Francesco Sequi. Zhang Mao indicated that trademark rights protection played very important functions in safeguarding market competitive orders, protecting enterprises and consumers’ legitimate rights, and hoped to strengthen communications and cooperation with Italian governments to exchange relevant laws, regulations and information and to promote bilateral economic development.
Zhang Mao welcomed Mr. Ettore Francesco Sequi for his visit to SAIC as the new Italian Ambassador and introduced him SAIC’s main obligations and relevant work progress in promoting commercial system reforms and in trademark registrations and administrations. Zhang Mao expressed that with the constant promotion of commercial system, the vitality of market entities were incented greatly with an increase of more than 10 thousand entities daily. Enterprises’ awareness to intellectual property was also increased. Total trademark registrations and applications and the registrations and applications from foreign companies all grew quickly, which was a great challenge and opportunity for trademark registration and administration. SAIC highly valued trademark rights protections, and took them as a very important way to create good market environment and to protect market order, and to protect domestic and foreign enterprises’ legitimate rights.
Zhang Mao indicated that with the smooth development of bilateral trades, Italian companies registered more and more trademarks in China and Chinese enterprise also wanted more protections to their intellectual properties in Italy. He hoped relevant authorities could further improve bilateral institutional cooperation within obligations, exchange relevant experiences in trademark protections, strengthen communication and promote constant development of bilateral economic relations.
Mr. Ettore Francesco Sequi showed his gratitude to SAIC for its work in incenting market vitalities, and protecting trademark rights, and thanked for the protections to Italian enterprises’ legitimate trademark rights according to laws. He expressed that SMEs in Italy grew quickly in recent years and they had great necessities in intellectual property rights protections. He noted that Italian government had always been valuing the protection to trademarks and conducted wide cooperation with SAIC. He hoped to strengthen bilateral communication, exchange experts to communicate experiences, enhance cooperation in intellectual property, especially the geographical indication protections and in promoting bilateral business development, and promote a new level for bilateral economic relations.
