China has cracked a total of 18, 130 trademark infringement cases during the first six months of this year, sources from the a national meeting of Industrial and Commercial Bureau directors said Wednesday in Beijing.

The country's industrial and commercial authorities were said to have send 1.01 million inspectors, checked 2.68 million business households, some 12,000 trade markets and ferreted out 1, 745 hideouts of producing or selling fake products.

Of all trademark infringement cases, 2,451 were related to foreign trademarks. Approximately 14.45 million fake trademark logos and nearly than 40,000 counterfeiting facilities were seized while 7.01 million fake products were disposed of.

An aggregated cash penalty of 115 million yuan (about 13.9 million US dollars) has been collected. Meanwhile, 88 people were taken over by judicial authorities for further investigation.

At the meeting held in north China's Tianjin Municipality, An Qinghu, director of the National Trademark Bureau, said that China has made substantial achievements in protecting intellectual property rights through judicial means.

According to him, the numbers of trademark infringement cases and suspects taken over by judicial departments at various levels between January and June are 3.2 times and 2.3 times as much as the same period of last years separately.

Moreover, the number of cracked trademark infringement cases in the first half of this year grew 13.4 percent over the same period of 2004 while the number of cracked cases involving foreign trademarks grew 55.5 percent.

Source: Xinhua