China IP & Protection: A step-by-step guide

Your options:

1) If you want to prevent a company from selling a design in your own country, you only need to pursue getting copyrights, patents or trademarks in your own country. The disadvantage of this is that you will have difficulty shutting down manufacturing in other countries and sales in other countries, because filings in your own country have limited value in a foreign country. So, if you learn of a foreign manufacturer copying your product, and you haven't filed in that country, you can really only wait until good cross the border into your country before you can take action. And then, you're likely only taking action against the importer, not the manufacturer.

2) If you want to prevent a company from manufacturing or selling your product in another country, you need to file for intellectual property rights in that country. Nowadays, that means filing for the rights in China, since that is where everything is manufactured. With a comprehensive strategy you'll work to protect your trademarks, copyrights (packaging, instructions) and patents. Here you seem to have two filing choices. The inexpensive way is to use a China lawyer that mainly translates your home country filings. The expensive way it to involve your home country's lawyer in the process.

3) If you want to protect your intellectual property globally, you need to file in multiple countries.

Of course, filing for intellectual property rights protection is only the first step. The second step is enforcement, which is an entirely more complicated story. If an overseas manufacturer is copying your products, you first have to find them, then get a court ruling to shut them down, and then get the local authorities to enforce the court ruling. By the time these steps are complete, the damage may already have been done.

You may be better off with other internal controls to defend your intellectual property. Operate your company on a need-to-know basis and don't let employees (who may leave) or a business partner see the full picture. Compartmentalize information. For example, use multiple supplier for components, but don't let any one person know who all the suppliers are. Manage supplier, logistics and quality control vendors through multiple personnel with different reporting lines to both compartmentalize information and to minimize risk of fraud.

And, if you want your intellectual property rights protected, don't go buying copy DVDs from the corner guy across from your apartment or hotel.

You can find more information at:
The US China Business Council page on Intellectual Property Rights
The US Embassy Beijing's IPR toolkit

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