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"optimizing the legal business environment through procuratorial duties" series of reports

legal services add flavor to sichuan liquor

sichuan: building a comprehensive and three-dimensional intellectual property protection system for sichuan liquor

"the wine of sichuan is strong and unrivalled, and the fish in the river is delicious. i always want to get drunk and clean out the yanchi pond." du fu, a poet in the tang dynasty, expressed his love for the fine wine of sichuan in his poem, depicting the profound heritage of sichuan wine in the long river of history.

local conditions produce local fine wine. as the core production area of ​​chinese liquor, sichuan's liquor industry is an important economic pillar and a characteristic and advantageous industry. it has now formed many world-renowned famous liquor brands and enterprise clusters, such as the "six golden flowers" of sichuan liquor.

"the third plenary session of the 20th central committee of the communist party of china proposed to improve the property rights system, protect the economic property rights of all types of ownership equally and permanently in accordance with the law, and establish an efficient comprehensive intellectual property management system. the protection of the sichuan liquor industry is a long and arduous task." lu jie, member of the party leadership group and deputy procurator general of the sichuan provincial procuratorate, said that in recent years, the sichuan provincial procuratorate has promoted the construction of a more comprehensive and three-dimensional sichuan liquor intellectual property procuratorial protection system through innovative "double reporting system" (the infringed intellectual property rights holder reports the case to the public security organs and simultaneously reports the clues to the procuratorate at the same level), established cross-regional duty performance collaboration, and strengthened digital empowerment. such measures have created an equal, orderly, and vibrant legal business environment for the development of the sichuan liquor industry.

the "dual reporting system" strengthens the performance of prosecutorial duties

promoting vertical in-depth governance

in october 2022, a wine company reported to the public security organs that its distributors wang and li were suspected of producing and selling counterfeit wine, and reported the clues to the jiangyang district procuratorate of luzhou city through the "double reporting system" for intellectual property cases. after analyzing and judging the clues of the case, the procuratorate guided the public security organs to analyze chat records and express logistics data, and included the upstream and downstream production and sales chains in the scope of investigation. after the procuratorate filed a public prosecution, at the end of 2023, the court sentenced the four people to corresponding penalties in accordance with the law.

the case was closed, but the prosecution did not stop. "in response to the problems found in the case in terms of personnel management and distribution system implementation, our court issued prosecution suggestions to the wine company involved, proposing regular training and warning education, strengthening research and analysis, and promoting the wine company to carry out work to plug loopholes and build systems." hu qinxiao, the prosecutor in charge of the case and deputy chief prosecutor of jiangyang district procuratorate, told reporters that the court also reported the above issues to the office of the procuratorial protection alliance of sichuan liquor intellectual property rights in luzhou city, and promoted luzhou laojiao, langjiu and other sichuan liquor companies to carry out special inspections and establish an industry "blacklist" management platform.

wang xiaorong, deputy director of the economic crime prosecution department of the sichuan provincial procuratorate, introduced that since the implementation of the "double reporting system" for intellectual property cases, the pre-trial handling period of intellectual property criminal cases has been shortened by an average of 3 to 4 months, and the evidence basis has become more solid. all criminal cases prosecuted by the provincial procuratorate have been convicted by the court. in 2022, the system was rated by the state council as the first batch of typical cases for the construction of a strong intellectual property country.

cross-regional procuratorial cooperation

achieving horizontal coordination and unification

"chengdu makes counterfeit liquor and sells it in chongqing, and liquor companies in sichuan and chongqing are all harmed." this is a true portrayal of a case involving the production and sale of counterfeit liquor and infringement of registered trademark rights, which was jointly handled by the procuratorate of sichuan tianfu new area (sichuan pilot free trade zone) and the procuratorate of yunyang county, chongqing.

in june this year, the intellectual property protection team of the jiangyang district procuratorate of luzhou city organized a study and discussion on trademark anti-counterfeiting technology.

"in the process of handling the case, the procuratorates of sichuan and chongqing strengthened communication on issues such as sharing of evidence and unified fact-finding to ensure the coordination of legal application and criminal policy, and achieved a full-chain crackdown on the production source and sales terminals of infringing and counterfeit products." yang jun, the prosecutor in charge of the case and a full-time member of the procuratorial committee of the procuratorate of sichuan tianfu new area (sichuan free trade zone), introduced that in response to the criminal characteristics of such cases, the sichuan provincial procuratorate and the chongqing municipal procuratorate jointly signed the "opinions on strengthening procuratorial cooperation between sichuan and chongqing on intellectual property rights", and jointly established five mechanisms including communication and liaison, case collaboration, coordinated protection, talent exchange and training, and publicity and guarantee.

the cross-regional cooperation to protect the intellectual property rights of sichuan liquor is far more than this. the sichuan provincial procuratorate, chengdu municipal procuratorate, and sichuan tianfu new area (sichuan free trade pilot zone) procuratorate jointly set up a special intellectual property prosecution team to centrally handle intellectual property judicial protection cases, including those involving intellectual property rights in the liquor industry; the procuratorates of chengdu, luzhou, deyang, yibin, and suining formed the sichuan liquor industry intellectual property procuratorial protection alliance to jointly combat related crimes and upstream and downstream crimes and jointly protect famous brands; the procuratorates of chengdu, mianyang, suining, yibin and other places set up liquor industry intellectual property protection workstations, established a rapid case handling mechanism, and provided "one-stop" prosecution services for enterprises.

digital prosecution empowerment

precise supervision and protection

since february 2023, the shehong municipal procuratorate has handled two cases of stealing the verification qr code on the inside of a wine company's promotional bottle cap to redeem prizes. after the case was concluded, the procuratorate had in-depth communication with the wine company involved, and developed a "big data legal supervision model for fake famous liquor verification websites (qr codes)" in response to the problems found in the illegal elements making fake verification qr codes, copying verification qr codes, and building fake verification websites. as of august this year, the shehong municipal procuratorate has collected more than 3.31 million pieces of abnormal code scanning data and more than 470,000 pieces of abnormal website data based on this model, and transferred relevant criminal clues to the public security organs.

"in response to rights protection pain points such as the frequent sale of counterfeit goods online and rampant counterfeit verification websites, we explore digital empowerment and strive to discover clues for wine companies' rights protection and procuratorial supervision more accurately and quickly." the person in charge of the digital prosecution office of the sichuan provincial procuratorate introduced that in april 2023, the sichuan provincial procuratorate held the "digital prosecution to protect the development of the sichuan liquor industry forum". procuratorial organs in yibin, luzhou and other places and liquor companies such as wuliangye and luzhou laojiao carried out in-depth cooperation in six aspects, including jointly building a big data legal supervision model, sharing big data legal supervision basic data, and jointly promoting the application of big data legal supervision models, to jointly protect the high-quality development of the sichuan liquor industry.

over the past year, sichuan procuratorate and enterprises have worked together to build a cross-regional, cross-system, and cross-industry sichuan liquor intellectual property supervision and protection platform, which was put into trial operation in may this year. the platform consists of five big data models: e-commerce counterfeiting, code scanning verification, express logistics, cross-regional rights protection, and digital portraits. by comparing corporate data with data collected from administrative agencies, political and legal agencies, and the internet, it pushes clues for liquor companies to protect their rights and clues for procuratorial supervision cases. so far, the platform has pushed 427 clues for liquor companies to protect their rights and 475 procuratorial supervision cases.

"the procuratorate of sichuan province has taken multiple measures to comprehensively protect the healthy development of the sichuan liquor industry represented by luzhou laojiao and langjiu. it is particularly noteworthy that the procuratorate has promoted the improvement of the all-round, full-chain and full-process supervision system of the liquor industry through the development of big data legal supervision models and platforms, which provides useful reference for better protecting new quality productivity and ensuring high-quality development of the industry." zeng na, deputy to the national people's congress and general manager of the tasting innovation center of luzhou laojiao co., ltd., said.

(procuratorate daily, cao yingpin, li min, zhao dengzheng, zhou shaoyue)