Copyright, is a copy right?

By Coco Lei

If you walk around in Gongbei underground shopping area recently, it is not hard to see lots of dog-shaped dolls with a green body and a white head hanging around in retail shops there.

This doll named Seven is one of the protagonists in the hot movie CJ7 directed by Hong Kong-based Stephen Chow. However, most of these dolls are fakes. In a CCTV.com interview, director Chow expressed his shock and displeasure towards the huge sales of the illegal copies of Seven. He had authorized the legal-sale dealers to offer monetary awards to those who reported the illegal sales to the relevant authorities.

In accordance with the information provided by Chow's fans forum, the price of the genuine doll is even lower than the illegal copy. For a 4-inch tall doll, a genuine product costs RMB25 while the retail price of the illegal copy is RMB30. Yang Cheng Hoe, the sales supervisor of one of the authorized sales companies of CJ7 dolls, explained that the genuine production cost could be reduced by the strict control on the cost of material, technique and logistics.

Many people may ask, "Why are there still so many illegal copies of CJ7 dolls when the price of the genuine product is even less inexpensive?" The main reason is that the demand far exceeds supply. Another reason for the hot sales of illegal copies is that the price of the genuine products is too expensive for the general public, although this reason is applied in the usual case of counterfeit products but not the CJ7 doll. The movie CJ7 has created a new phenomenon that the price of the genuine products is even less inexpensive than the illegal copies, but that does not help cool down the market of illegal copies.

Intellectual property right is very important but can still be easily ignored in today's commercial world. One of the reasons is that people are not familiar with related laws.

According to Hong Kong Intellectual Property Department, Intellectual Property (IP) is a term that describes a range of rights in different aspects of business and products. The most common IP rights are regarding copyright, registered design, patent and trademarks, and they are usually shown in the publications in a symbol form like © for copyright, ® for registered design and ™ for trademarks.