A batch of 1.31 million shavers falsely branded with the French BIC name have been destroyed by customs officials at the Ningbo port, Zhejiang Province, in east China.
BIC chairman and chief executive officer Bruno Bich and the company's anti-counterfeit official Jerome Buscail paid a visit to the customs authority last Wednesday to express the company's appreciation of the action.
The Ningbo customs authority has beefed up its inspections of import and export cargoes for intellectual property rights (IPR) violations over recent years, customs officials said.
As many as 1.95 million so-called BIC shavers have been intercepted at the customs over the last two years.
In the first six months this year, customs handled nine IPR cases involving products worth 1.7 million yuan (US$200,000).
(People's Daily July 9, 2002)
