On May 26, Liu Junchen, vice minister of SAIC met with the visiting under secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Ms. Michelle K. Lee. Liu Junchen expressed to focus on its functions, to constantly improve trademark administration and management level, to strengthen bilateral communication and cooperation and to promote bilateral economic development.
Liu Junchen at first welcomed Ms. Lee’s visit to SAIC and introduced her SAIC’s functions and recent achievements, especially the latest development in trademark registrations and protections and the information on US enterprises. Liu Junchen indicated that for the past year, SAIC seriously implemented new Trademark Law, actively facilitated trademark registration procedures, comprehensively improved work efficiency, and greatly increased trademark application volume and valid trademark registrations. At the same time, AIC authorities and market supervision departments carefully implemented the deployment of National Leading Workgroup for Cracking down Infringements and Counterfeits, kept a high pressure on trademark infringements and counterfeits, which proved effective.
Liu Junchen expressed that SAIC actively participated in international cooperation in the field of intellectual property, and kept a good relationship with USPTO. Since the signing of strategic cooperation understanding memorandum in 2008, SAIC has conducted many fruitful actions with USPTO. SAIC would like to extend the communication and coordination with USPTO in multilateral mechanisms such as TM5 and WIPO to promote IP development around the whole world. Currently, SAIC and USPTO had finished the compilation of 2015 bilateral cooperation plan, where trademark administration and management trainings, trade secret protection seminar, local geographical indication joint promotion would be conducted. Liu said SAIC hoped that all plan would be carried out successfully.
Ms. Lee thanked for the meeting with Mr. Liu Junchen and highly valued the SAIC’s achievements in trademarks. She hoped to strengthen bilateral communication and wished for more practical actions with SAIC in the framework of bilateral MOU and annual cooperation plan to share best practice in IP.
During the meeting, both sides also made deep discussions in cracking down infringements and counterfeits in internet, trade secret protection, relations between IP and competition, and other common concerns.
