What a brand can do? To identify a product, to distinguish an enterprise, or to gather a lot of money. In Zhenjiang of Jiangsu province, people will tell you that trademark, although very small, could be a giant lever to drive local economy.
In the city’s development and transformation, independent brands of Zhenjiang Province such as HENG SHUN, ZHONG JING, FEI DA and HAI CHANG, successfully covered all industries including modern service, information, and agriculture. Currently, there are 17703 trademark registered there, which includes 41 well-known trademarks and 262 Jiangsu famous trademarks.
Zhengjian AIC focused on high technologies, seaport logistics, modern services and local advantages such as the breeding and processing of agricultural products, which suited China’s national development, had extraordinary local character, high add value and strong market competitiveness, to foster independent trademarks and the brand clusters and to promote industrial updates and structural optimization.
The economy development in Zhengjian transferred from attaching great importance on quantity to quality and to brand nowadays. In 2014, the value produced from brand enterprises exceeded 41.5 billion.
Change traditional thinking into an overall conception to foster trademarks
The traditional Dantu Tea industry has a scattered productivity and many small businesses with low competitiveness. In 2011, Zhenjiang unified the tea land into industrial park to attract the planting and processing. At the meantime, it encouraged the combination of more than twenty tea brands together for trademark registration, especially the GI mark registration. It also actively joined the formulation of national tea producing and processing standard, and finally promoted a unified local brand – CHANG SHAN JIAN HAO, which is a name card for the tea industry here.
Those, who think not the whole area, could not succeed at a specific area. Zhenjiang AIC knew very well on this theory and actively persuaded the Party Committee and the government, built and improved incentive system, and instructed enterprises to implement trademark strategy. It focused on both quantity and quality, to practice helping methods. It formulated and implemented many documents such as Zhenjiang IP Strategy implementation outline, Zhenjiang trademark team development five year plan, to give support for trademark strategy implementation and enterprises developments in many areas including project planning and financing, scientific development, quality controls, foreign trade and IP protection.
Attach great importance on market entities and provide strong services to instruct the brand building.
Gaoqiao village of Dantu District in Zhenjiang is famous for its snow boots. There are more than 200 factories with about 5000 workers. Those factories could manufacture more than 20 million boots per year, which accounts for 90% of the world total boots. However many small factories here have no trademark. They have to be copy cats and be punished always.
How to instruct the industry in Gaoqiao village into a sound track? Zhenjiang AIC for one hand instructed the combination of the whole boots making industry to establish a unified brand strategy, for other hand proposed a union standard for snow boots before competent authority and got approved. Gaoqiao village today has already on the road of brand development and successfully fostered some independent trademarks such as WEI DA SI, and applied more than 200 designs.
Brand building needs to comprehensively respect and activate enterprises dominant position. To improve the pertinence and efficiency for trademark strategy, Zhenjiang AIC focused on its services, took careful methods in instructing enterprises’ brand building, and provided all-round services to enterprises.
AIC authorities practically strengthened the administrative instruction to enterprises on the implementation of trademark strategy. With the issuing of trademark registration suggestions, trademark management reminders, trademark foster instructions, trademark illegal use warnings, trademark strategy tracking cards and trademark rights protection help cards, AIC services were implemented through enterprises’ founding, growing and developing to practically help them improve brand images.
Make efforts in enforcement and innovation to improve the quality level of brands
Zhenjiang AIC encouraged enterprises to internationalize the brands, instructed them to use the independent brands in international trades, to registered international marks, and to increase the proportion of export products bearing independent marks. It also instructed enterprises to use trademark licenses and chain-store managements to enlarge brand and expand brand effects.
Following the requirements of greatly increasing trademark registrations, strongly fostering famous brand clusters, rapidly implementing going out strategy by the provincial party committee and government, Zhenjiang AIC focused on the independence, advance, centralization and internationalization of brands, actively deployed functions of government, AIC, other authorities and enterprises, and fostered some independent brands having high advantages in competitions. By end of 2015, there will be comparatively improved independent brand fostering, developing and protecting system in the city to build independent brands and to increase independent brands add values from 8% in 2010 to more than 15%, which achieves or exceeds the target indicator for basically realizing modernization in Jiangsu.
Strength supervision to purify outer environments for brand development
Brand’s development needs a fair and honest market environment. Zhenjiang AIC in recent years, strengthened the protection to well-known (famous) trademarks and GI marks.
After ZHEN JIANG XIANG CU was protected as a collective mark, the relevant business had a great development, but the trademark infringement and malicious registration also happened. Zhenjiang AIC actively helps the vinegar association to conduct rights protection. In June 2010, at the critical moment of being registered by Korean, Zhenjiang AIC actively coordinated relevant parties, and after six months hard working, succeeded in getting the mark in Korea, which strengthened the confidence of national brands “going-out” and increased the rights protection awareness for GI holders. Currently, ZHEN JIANG XIANG SU has become a real national brand, and the products entered more than 60 countries and regions.
Zhenjiang AIC strengthened protection to major trademarks. It on the basis of current list, increased 10 marks. It upon the requirements of enterprises organized special actions. It effectively helped enterprises such as DA YA DI BAN, HAI CHANG YAN JING, JING YOU MA YOU and DAN YANG YAN JING XIE HUI to implement right protections outside the city. It also unified enforcement powers, actively coordinated with the public security authority, the quality supervision authority, people’s procuratorate, and people’s court to build a joint mechanism in trademark law enforcements.
