Sisyphus in China:
U.S. Lawyer's Antipiracy Task Is Endless
By NEIL KING JR.
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 26, 2005; Page A17
BEIJING -- Mark Cohen, avid cyclist and top U.S. counterfeit fighter in China, has seen a lot of fakes. Fake car windshields, fake drugs, fake Rolex watches, fake Hollywood DVDs. He has seen Chinese companies masquerading, in toto, as American ones.
But what really got him were the knockoff "Livestrong" bracelets that started popping up on the streets here a few months ago. The Texas-based Lance Armstrong Foundation, named for the seven-time Tour de France winner, sells the popular yellow wristbands for $1 a pop to raise money for cancer research.
[Mark Cohen]
Slightly off-color versions now go for about half that price in Beijing, with nothing left over for charity. "That, for me, was a new low," says Mr. Cohen, who first saw the knockoffs at Wind Speed, the city's premier bike shop. "Everyone was impressed I had a real one."
Mr. Cohen, on the other hand, would be harder to clone. A China scholar and fluent Mandarin speaker, he became an intellectual-property lawyer in the 1980s, practiced law in China in the 1990s, then joined the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in September 2001, three months before China entered the World Trade Organization.
Last fall, with the U.S. government fuming over a Chinese "piracy epidemic," the patent office lent Mr. Cohen to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. He shipped out, with his wife and four kids, on a three-year stint as America's first-ever intellectual-property attaché anywhere in the world.
His job is to prod China to crack down on its rampant counterfeit and piracy problem, which is just one of a panoply of economic tensions festering between the U.S. and China these days, along with textile exports and growing Chinese interest in buying U.S. companies. Last week, Beijing budged a bit on one big point of contention, agreeing to strengthen its currency against the dollar.
But as Mr. Cohen's experience shows, China has a long way to go to satisfy its U.S. critics. His is a job fit for Sisyphus.
Recently leaving a Starbucks off Jianguomenwai Avenue, one of the city's main drags, Mr. Cohen had to navigate through a scrum of fake-DVD hawkers. Each carried stacks of the latest releases in pouches slung overshoulder.
"We call these guys 'backpackers,' " Mr. Cohen said, "because, as opposed to the shops, they sell on the move and scramble when the police come around."
A man with slicked-back hair and a gray blazer pokes a copy of "The War of the Worlds" into Mr. Cohen's ribs. "You want DVD? One dollar," the man says. Mr. Cohen examines the man's rubber wristbands, and seems relieved that none is of the Livestrong variety. Farther up the street, two women chased after Mr. Cohen selling shirts said to come from Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. wrapped in plastic -- five for $10 -- and suspiciously cheap Breitling and Rolex watches -- your pick, $5.
Mr. Cohen, sweating in the heat, waved the women away and fumed under his breath: "Here I am, the U.S. attaché for IP, and every day I have to deal with this crap. It's an insult."
A native New Yorker, Mr. Cohen has become rather a legend around China in his nine months of service. Early on, he got plenty of ink locally when he compared piracy to opium and China to an addict. He has appeared often on television, debating China's record on the intellectual-property front. "I'm something of a star," he jokes.
He pops up at so many conferences that some Chinese officials wonder if there's not more than one Mark Cohen. "He is everywhere," says Xiang Xin, director of China's National Working Group for Intellectual Property Rights Protection, a newly formed government body meant to bulk up enforcement.
[China's counterfeit markets attract huge crowds with their knockoffs -- arrays of products that include athletic shoes, cosmetics, wristwatches, perfumes and handbags.]
China's counterfeit markets attract huge crowds with their knockoffs -- arrays of products that include athletic shoes, cosmetics, wristwatches, perfumes and handbags.
In his off hours, Mr. Cohen, 49 years old, is an avid collector of Chinese fakery stories. His favorite involves the writings of Zheng Chengsi, one of China's most noted scholars on intellectual-property issues. In the early 1990s, the Chinese attorney general's office collected and published several of Mr. Zheng's books under one title -- without his permission. Then last year, an Internet company called Beijing Scholar Digital Technology put all eight of Mr. Zheng's books online, again without asking. He sued, and the company was fined $6,000.
"Pilfering scholarly works on piracy -- just amazing," says Mr. Cohen.
China's enforcement system is a vast tangle of laws and agencies; Mr. Cohen estimates that at least 500,000 government officials in one way or another oversee the granting and protection of patents, copyrights and trademarks across the country.
One part of his job is simply to know how that system works, if only to help navigate the legal shoals for U.S. companies and others back in Washington. "No one knows the weird crannies better than Mark Cohen," says his boss, Jon Dudas, undersecretary for intellectual property at the U.S. Commerce Department.
He is also meant to egg on changes, however he can. His latest crusade: the creation of a national IP court of appeals.
Still, Mr. Cohen is a bit sensitive about what he has accomplished so far, or hopes to accomplish by his departure date of December 2007. There are things to show. Under steady U.S. pressure, China in December broadened its range of criminal penalties for IP infringements and has stepped up prosecutions. The State Office of Intellectual Property Protection in May published a 100-page booklet describing the best crackdowns of 2004, including the seizure of 16 million cases of fake Lancôme and Chanel perfumes.
China is also abuzz these days with talk of intellectual property and the need to steer clear of fakes. There is now a daily newspaper, in Chinese, called Intellectual Property News, along with several close imitations. Some city buses in Beijing now carry bright banners that read, "Don't Buy Pirated Software -- Use Legal Software."
But Mr. Cohen is a realist. At first, he thought China should focus on a few of the biggest cities -- Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou -- and make examples of those. Now he is thinking that a better idea might be to concentrate just on the Chaoyang district of Beijing, home to some 1.5 million people along with the U.S. Embassy and the local headquarters of Siemens AG and Microsoft Corp.
Another notable feature of Chaoyang is the latest Mecca for knockoffs: the five-story, tourist-crammed Silk Street shopping center, right off Jianguomenwai Avenue.
Silk Street, inside, is a welter of fake Hermès purses, bogus North Face jackets and alleged Armani shirts, all being pushed by loud and persistent vendors. But at the entrance, plastered to the glass doors, Mr. Cohen spots something new: a large sign, posted by the Beijing Trademark Office.
"From here on, it is prohibited to sell the following products and trademarks," the notice reads, after which it lists 24 brands and logos -- including Hermès, North Face and Armani.
"Well, there you have it," Mr. Cohen says, less than pleased. "A little progress." |
