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Agricultural Best Practices and Law Enforcement Connection Seminar

Create Time:2019-03-07

To implement the strategic requirements of national intellectual property rights, further promote IP protection and anti-counterfeiting work in the agricultural sector, improve communication efficiency with major law enforcement agencies and further promote the cooperation, thereby guaranteeing the quality and safety of agricultural products, the Agricultural Best Practices and Law Enforcement Connection Seminar sponsored by the Agricultural Industry Working Group (IWG) of the Quality Brands Protection Committee (referred to as QBPC) was successfully held in Chun’an, Zhejiang Province from October 22 to 23, 2018, with 10 leaders of law enforcement agencies from different provinces and 12 representatives of 5 member companies of QBPC attended.

 

 

The seminar invited leaders of law enforcement agencies in the agricultural sector of China’s major agricultural provinces and representatives of member companies to share and discuss the following topics: 1. Current IPR infringement trends in the agricultural industry; 2. Best practices sharing by member companies; 3. Promote cooperation from data to intelligence with major agricultural provinces; 4. Share legal analysis of typical violations and explore potential cooperation between member companies and law enforcement agencies.

This seminar was guided and assisted by the leaders of the Economic Crime Investigation Department of the Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China (referred to as ECID/ MPS). Before the seminar, the leaders of ECID/ MPS gave some instructions and suggestions to the leaders of the member companies and the law enforcement agencies: 1. The relevant law enforcement agencies should listen to the voice of the enterprises; 2. The enterprises should cooperate with law enforcement agencies to promote the progress of social law while maintaining their respective intellectual property rights; 3. Law enforcement units and right holders should establish a good cooperation model through experience sharing and good communication to jointly ensure the healthy and long-term development of the Chinese market.

The representative of Corteva Agriscience Co., Ltd. (referred to as Corteva) gave an opening speech and thanked QBPC for hosting the seminar to provide member companies with the opportunity of discussing with the law enforcement agencies the status quo and the future development direction of China’s pesticide rights protection. Representatives from Corteva and FMC Corporation shared the infringement and anti-counterfeiting trends of IP protection in seed and pesticide of current agricultural industry, respectively. The leader of the Hubei Law Enforcement Corps explained the new challenges and countermeasures for law enforcement on agricultural materials. Representatives of member companies shared their best practices, including Ningbo’s large-scale cross-border production and sales of fake pesticides on March 31, Shantou’s fake pesticide case and Wu’an’s fake seed case. Representatives of the law enforcement agencies at the seminar showed strong interest in the cases shared and discussed the current problems in handling cases involving agricultural materials from the perspectives of laws and regulations, application procedures and law enforcement.

Representatives present discussed the cooperation mechanism between the right holders and the major agricultural provinces from data to intelligence. In response to the requirements of law enforcement agencies for intelligence and investigation cooperation, the law enforcement representative from Heilongjiang Province Public Security Department proposed some suggestions for member companies: 1. The right holders provide the labels, specifications, abbreviations of their products and basic information for anti-counterfeiting to facilitate the preliminary identification of products in the market; 2. The right holders provide preliminary credible clues and intelligence information to the law enforcement agencies; 3. The right holders provide the blacklist of the criminals and the infringing enterprises to prevent illegal activities after insufficient administrative punishment. The law enforcement representative from Public Security Department of Shandong Province also hoped that the QBPC and its member companies can deepen their cooperation with the anti-counterfeiting office of agricultural materials, share relevant data, and jointly explore the application of pesticide active ingredient quick-test device and pesticide fingerprinting map in combating crimes based on the quick-test laboratory for food and drugs.