Shenzhen topped mainland cities in the number of local brands being certified as nationally famous by State authorities last year, with nine receiving the honor in 2006.

This was disclosed by a municipal industry official Thursday at a meeting to mark the seventh World Intellectual Property (IP) Day.

The nine Shenzhen brands include Haorizi cigarettes, 7CF paint and Kingdee software. A total of 32 other local brands were placed on the provincially famous list. Both figures are Chinese records, said Shen Qingsan, chief of the Shenzhen Municipal Administration for Industry and Commerce.

"By the end of 2006, there were 69,000 trademarks registered in Shenzhen, of which 21 were nationally famous brands and 101 Guangdong famous brands," he said.

"The theme of this year's World IP Day is encouraging creativity, as the intellectual property system aims to sustain and nourish creative people," said Cao Zhongqiang, secretary of the Chinese Trademark Association.

"Shenzhen pioneers other Chinese cities in encouraging innovation and patent registration. Huawei Technologies, a nationally famous telecom manufacturer, owns 12,000 patents," he said.

People have gradually come to realize the importance of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in China in recent years, but the country still has few globally influential brands and lacks nationally acknowledged technology standards.

Cao said he had also frequently come across trademark violation cases which arose due to a lack of cooperation between the mainland and Taiwan Province.

He Bojun, a senior manager with the Shenzhen cigarette factory which owns the trademark Haorizi, agreed with Cao that Chinese firms are not as conscious as their competitors abroad about protecting their trademarks, although many have registered their own trademarks.

Shenzhen's industrial and commercial authorities cracked 139 trademark infringement cases last year and confiscated 920,000 products. Twenty-five cases were transferred to judicial departments for further investigation.

The authorities also pledged Thursday to crack down on unruly vendors in Luohu Commercial City, where copies of luxury products made by Louis Vuitton, Gucci and so on are sold in open.

Editor: Yan