Chinese industry and commerce management departments at all levels discovered 51,851 cases involving infringement of trademarks like Louis Vuitton, Chanel and POLO last year, up 27 percent from the previous year, an official aid Thursday.

The local administration of Sichuan Province, southwest China, detained 5,000 pirated clothes involving about 120 famous foreign trademarks in 2004 and Zhejiang Province in the east discovered a case infringing Gillette at a value of more than 30 million yuan (3.6 million US dollars) this January, said Zhao Gang of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

The cases discovered last year included 40,171 trademark infringements, up 51.6 percent year-on-year, 5,401 of which involved foreign trademarks, up 158 percent. A total of 82 criminal suspects in 96 illegal trademark cases were sent to judicial departments.

The administration said that it will continue the campaign to protect legal trademarks across the country.

Thirteen Chinese government departments, including the National Office of Rectification and Standardization of Market Economic Order, the Ministry of Publicity and the Ministry of Information Industry, plan to jointly launch a campaign on intellectual property rights protection from April 20 to 26, in an effort to increase the public awareness of intellectual property and to fend off counterfeit products.

Source: Xinhua