A group of senior intellectual property officials, including Tsai Lien-sheng (蔡練生), director-general of the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, will visit Beijing next week to meet with their Chinese counterparts on trademark issues, industry sources said yesterday.
It will mark the first encounter between high-ranking intellectual property officials from the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, the sources said.
The topics to be addressed in their talks will focus on protection of Taiwanese companies' trademarks and patents in China as well as issues regarding Chinese traders' registration of famous Taiwanese geographic names as their farm produce's brand names, such as Kukeng coffee, Cheshang rice and Alishan tea, the sources said.
The IPO officials will go to China along with a trade delegation organized by the Taipei-based Chinese National Federation of Industries, the sources said, adding that the Taiwan Affairs Office under China's State Council has assisted in arranging the group's itinerary in Beijing.
According to the sources, it took three years of efforts to arrange for Taiwan's IPO officials to visit Beijing.
The delegation is scheduled to leave for Beijing May 23 for a 10-day visit.
The travel destinations will include Beijing, Shanghai, as well as Kunshan in Jiangsu Province, all of which are major hubs for Taiwan-funded businesses.
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