Asia IP

Jingdezhen, in Jiangxi Province, known as the “porcelain capital of China,” is a city famous for producing quality pottery.

Jingdezhen porcelain has beautiful shapes, rich decorations and unique styles. However, forged designs in pottery are hurting art works that should be created and innovated by heart and soul, say lawyers in the region.

Chen Lifeng, a lawyer at Qinfeng Law Firm in Nanchang, Jiangxi, says that although protection rules were put in place for typical traditional Qinghua porcelain, Linglong porcelain and Fencai porcelain by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine in 2005, IP laws are inadequate to protect the beautifully-made pottery due to the complexity and variety in the industry.

In November 2014, China’s first pottery copyright trading web platform was put online, aiming to fight infringement and pirated commercial products. The platform, once it has been applied nationally, will bring big benefits to the pottery trading market, since an increasing number of pottery trade deals are being conducted online.

The move was mainly pushed through by Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, whose establishment created an environment for cultural continuity and provides assistance to the Chinese cultural industry. In recent years, the Institute has been playing an important role in IP, improving peoples’ awareness, as well as publicizing and promoting local cultures to the world.

Chen says protection of pottery should be adopted into the legal system to better reduce pirated products. She says that China could learn from South Korea and Japan about their experiences in folklore protection, further to promote its internationalized process of pottery IP, and that the government should not skimp on any efforts for IP protection. To successfully operate in the market and fight piracy, says Chen, Jiangxi pottery industry still has a long way to go.

Jiangxi has 32 folk arts regions, owning outbound historical and cultural heritage. That includes paper-cuts, poems, calligraphy and nuo drama (one of the most popular folk operas in southern China). Chen says most of the art forms that have been passed from one generation to another rely on oral records.

“Written records, on the other hand, are rare. Specific laws, including copyright, trademark and patent, have been set up and modified separately, but there is not a piece of united IP law, which arrogates the possibility to protect cultural heritage as a whole,” he says. To better protect the cultural heritage according to their own features, what China needs is more than the current IP law system. Cooperation between the administrative and judicial systems, for example, would help China become a stronger power in IP.