Clothing industry companies to be alerted about the use of pirated software in the US

Wen Dao ma

Recently, two foreign garment manufacturers from Ningbo Boyang Holding Group Co., Ltd. (Ningbo Beyond Home Textile Co.) and Pratibha Syntex, India Companies and their sister companies have been sued in California, accusing two companies of exporting clothing from California to use pirated software during production and sales, gaining an unfair competitive advantage for American companies.

The Chinese company is known to have used software from companies such as Adobe, Microsoft and Symantec without paying software license fees. The United States said the two foreign garment manufacturers had not paid the software license fee, thus gaining a huge cost advantage in the counterfeiting and transportation of the meager profits.

In recent years, with the increase of China's exports, the corresponding international litigation is also increasing. California attorney General, Kamala Harris, has pointed out that the use of pirated software by overseas companies in the manufacturing process has caused competition damage to local businesses. Harris became the second state Attorney-General in the United States to take legal action against exporters who use pirated software to gain an unfair advantage and weaken rivals. If the two companies are found to be legally liable or decide to settle, the court is likely to impose fines and other penalties to deter other companies from doing improper competition in California.

It is worth our domestic enterprises ' vigilance, according to the law on anti-unfair competition invoked by the Attorney General of California, all foreign exporters must ensure that they use legitimate software in all business processes, such as production, sales and transportation, or they will face serious consequences of being sued and fined, and may even be barred from entering the U.S. market. It is well known that in the domestic market, "free software" has been used by domestic enterprises, basically a normal operation, because we have been accustomed to the Internet to bring the free lunch, and did not take the corresponding intellectual property rights. As a result, when entering the international market competition, it is found that this is very easy to face legal risks.

As early as three months ago, the Massachusetts attorney General, Martha Caucle, reached a settlement with the Thai seafood processors, the lung Seafood Company, which was also accused of using illegal it technology in its operations and thereby damaging the interests of local rivals. In accordance with the Court's settlement decision, the company eventually paid a fine and had to use the legal software to continue operating in Massachusetts.

The US move sends a clear warning to companies that steal software intellectual property rights: Even if it is miles away from the US, it is hard to break the law. As a result, Chinese manufacturers and Suppliers must act quickly to review the software usage of the enterprise's supply chain and ensure the use of licensed software in accordance with the law. A small amount of money saved by using pirated software is simply not worth the risk of losing the US market or being at a competitive disadvantage.

In China, because of well-known reasons, many enterprises are often in disregard of intellectual property rights, we do not have this awareness. Because in the domestic market competition, each other does not respect the intellectual property rights behavior, also does not matter. But to enter the overseas market, because of its own market structure changed, the international market attaches great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights, so our enterprises to enter the international market, we must regulate their behavior, and respect for each aspect of intellectual property.

Of course, the protection of intellectual property in the domestic market has become more and more important. With the advent of the Internet, especially the popularity of mobile clients and the constant infiltration of app applications, we have seen a gradual acceptance of people's fees, a change brought about by the online app Store. Although many people also like to use the free software, but for a business enterprise, need to standardize their participation in the market competition of the various technical links. The norm itself is a protection of the market, but also a respect for innovation.