It is probably not a common awareness yet for domestic plastic product manufacturers that using the same food storage design might infringe on others’ intellectual property rights (IPR). The Decor Corporation Pty Ltd (Decor), a worldwide leading designer, manufacturer, and distributor of houseware products, has been conducting a series of rights protection activities in recent years in China for “Décor” brand, sounding the alarm for Chinese enterprises on IPR awareness as a role model on rights protection. With the advent of the “World Intellectual Property Day”, Decor reviewed its IPR protection progress over recent years in China, hoping that in this way, it could also encourage the IPR holders and enterprises to make efforts together, fulfill the corporate social responsibility, actively safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of consumers as well as the enterprises themselves.
Founded in 1958 and based in Australia, Decor has won numerous awards and accolades for its unique and innovative designs. .Having always been attaching great value to and respecting IPR, Decor has acquired a great number of IPRs for many of its plastic storage containers, including design patent rights, copyrights, trademark rights etc.. In the case of any IPR infringement, Decor has spared no efforts in actively taking actions and deterring infringement.
“Decor has been paying attention to the market in years, and made noticeable progress in the measures taken such as tracking and negotiating with infringing parties, sending lawyers to trade fairs and other exhibitions to conduct surveys and take effective rights protection actions, cooperating with administrative authorities in enforcement etc.. For parties of serious infringement, we would send them a Lawyer Letter at first, notifying them Decor’s IPRs and their act of infringement in the hope of urging them to stop the act through amicable communications. While if the infringing parties further refuse to reply or cease the infringing act, we will consider lawsuit with court to protect our legitimate rights,” Director of Decor Mr. Raymond David Gordon introduced. In 2010, Decor filed a lawsuit against a Zhejiang-based plastic product manufacturer for infringing on its design patent rights and copyrights, and the two parties eventually reached a settlement agreement on court conciliation. The defendant acknowledged the design patent rights and copyrights Decor owns, promised not to produce or sell products infringing on these rights in the future and to modify or destroy relevant moulds, and paid corresponding compensation.
As pointed out by experts, production of infringing goods would not only impose immeasurable losses on the enterprises who own the rights, but also heavily impair the interests of consumers. Therefore in the meantime of managing and controlling product quality, legitimate enterprises also need to pay great attention to IPRs to guarantee the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.
It’s introduced that Decor currently owns 199 pieces of design patents in China. “China’s economy is growing really fast, and Decor highly values this market,” Mr. Gordon added, “we will continue to value IPR development and protection, and hope to strengthen communications with the relevant Chinese government authorities and enterprises, so as to make contribution to build up and maintain a fair and sound market environment.”
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