Danish and Chinese authorities have signed an agreement to increase co-operation to help Danish companies protect their trademarks.
The business and growth minister, Henrik Sass Larsen (Socialdemokraterne), signed the agreement with the Chinese State Administration for Industry and Commerce on a trip to China last week.
The government hopes the deal will lead Danish businesses to better understand the conditions in China and their opportunities to enforce and protect their trademarks there.
“Some Danish companies have had problems with the Chinese copyright rules and the deal is intended to prevent this in the future,” Sass Larsen said in a press release. “The deal creates a better framework for future cooperation between Denmark and China regarding trademarks.”
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The deal outlines a range of concrete mechanisms that the government says will strengthen co-operation between the two countries by, for example, exchanging important legislative changes, and important decisions from trademark authorities.
Danish businesses made 1,241 trademark applications to the Chinese authorities in 2011, but many businesses have found that their trademarks were already registered before they arrived.
One company was the fashion brand Bruuns Bazaar, which discovered in 2009 that its trademark had already been registered for several years.
“It was obvious to us that our trademark had been stolen but it was almost impossible, and very expensive, to prove,” owner Teis Bruun told Berlingske last year.
