It didn’t take long. The logo for the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games was unveiled on August 3, and already some T-shirts using the logo without the committee’s authorization have been found in Beijing.
And by Tuesday Beijing’s market watchdog had seized 134 items of clothing that were illegally using the logo in Beijing clothes markets. Fines of up to five times the illegal income were collected.
Associated Press reports that 130,000 items were confiscated in Beijing last year that infringed on the trademarks of sundry preliminary 2008 Olympic logos.
Yuan Bin, Beijing 2008’s deputy head of marketing said “the demand for Olympic products is great. People want these things”.
Liu Yan, deputy director of the committee’s legal affairs department, told a press conference Wednesday, “we will continue to assist the industry and commerce authorities and the customs authorities to seize unauthorized goods that are using the Olympic emblem illegally”.
Local industry and commerce authorities will carry out special inspections this week of shops, printing companies, tourist sites and advertisements in an attempt to protect the Olympic logo’s intellectual property rights.
Planned protection techniques include anti-piracy tags on official merchandise, sport checks at ports of entry and exist, and undercover operations to ferret out places where Olympic-related fakery is underway.
Also, announcements are being posted in state-controlled newspapers warning people that Olympic-related counterfeiting will have serious consequences.
The official media has reported that anyone selling Olympic logo items illegally could face fines of up to $6,000.
Earlier this month the organizing committee announced that no organization could use the logo for business purposes without the committee’s permission.
Bin said that the committee will promote a greater variety of souvenirs with the Olympic logo in addition to the current array of stamps, souvenir badges, T-shirts and maps, which have been sold in limited quantities since August 3 and have had a very good market response.
