China cracks down on IPR violations regarding Beijing Winter Olympics

BEIJING -- China's National Copyright Administration and five other authorities have been supervising the investigation of some key cases involving infringements of copyright and other intellectual property rights (IPR) related to the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games and the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games.

Wang Zhicheng, head of the copyright management division under the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said at a press conference Sunday that the public will be briefed about the latest developments of the investigations in a timely manner.

As of March 15, a total of 110,770 relevant illegal online links have been deleted and 10,072 infringing accounts have been dealt with, Wang said.

At the press conference, He Zhimin, deputy director of the National Intellectual Property Administration, said the administration has dealt with and exposed over 1,700 cases of bad-faith registration squatting of Olympics-related trademarks in the first quarter of this year.

Also, unauthorized spread of Olympic sport event programs on various platforms has been targeted in the crackdown, including illegal transmission via short video accounts, Wang said.

The inspection and crackdown on violations of Olympics-related copyrighted works in audio-visual, written, art and musical forms at some key websites and key areas are also underway, according to Wang.