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Sun Mingyuan did not expect to win when his garment company sued five textile manufacturers and retailers for violating the copyright of fabric patterns, but win he did.

"My case might be the first of its kind in China. We just wanted to protect the interests of consumers and defend our brand," Sun, the general manager of Moreline (HK) Co, said yesterday.

The Hong Kong-registered garment manufacturer, which has a manufacturing plant in Shenzhen, has established a high-end brand for professional women, Moreline, on the mainland since 1990.

It gets all its raw materials from Europe, where every pattern has its own copyright.

However, a large quantity of garments that copied the styles and patterns of Moreline products were seen in different Chinese cities from last September.

Though low quality, their low prices just one 10th or one 20th of the Moreline lines attracted many buyers and caused Moreline to suffer big losses, said Sun.

The firm decided to take five companies involved in illegally using Moreline's patterns to the People's Court of Luohu District in Shenzhen in December 2005.

The leading German dying and printing mill, KBC, one of Moreline's suppliers, owns the copyrights for the fabrics.

Three of the five sued firms were garment manufactures, all based in the southern city. They were charged with making clothes from imitated fabric and selling them locally with their own labels.

One firm was a local fabric retailer accused of supplying imitated fabric to manufactures and the fifth was a textile printing company in east China's Zhejiang Province charged with printing the patterns.

All the evidence provided by Moreline indicated it was the only legal user of the patterns on the mainland to have the authorization of KBC.

The district court ruled on July 31 that Moreline won its case, citing the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.

"China and Germany are both member countries of the Bern Convention. The rights of copyright owners of member countries should be protected by the laws of any other member country," the ruling said.

All five defendants were ordered to destroy the copied products and must compensate Moreline for a total of 625,000 yuan (US$78,125).

"The compensation can hardly make up for our losses but we are happy to find that none of our new patterns have been pirated in the marketplace," Sun said.

"The success in this case has encouraged us to further protect our legal rights," he added.

He said Moreline will sue another two garment manufacturers that have abused its patterns and also sue two local department stores that sell copied goods in their outlets.

Moreline has now applied for the copyright on every pattern imported from Europe to China in order to better protect its brand, Sun said.

(China Daily August 16, 2006)