Palace Museum takes controversial doll off market
An online store of the Palace Museum took one of their recently released cultural creative products off the market, the princess doll, on Thursday evening, due to the controversial intellectual property.
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The official Taobao store of the museum published a statement on their homepage, saying that the dolls were pulled off the shelves because "the body of the doll resembles the product of a certain foreign brand".
The statement emphasized that the head of the doll was the designers' original, and there is no possibility of a similar one in the market. However, the intellectual property of the doll's body part belongs to a cooperating factory, which has authorized the store to use it.
The store also expressed gratitude to the "warmhearted friends" who informed them about the resemblance, adding that they will remake the bodies of the dolls with a new mold.
The recall wins applause
Despite the controversy over the doll, many gave thumb-ups to the quick response of the store, as well as their attitude towards the intellectual property right.
"The store may be not strict enough in scrutiny, or the cooperating company's wrong inspiration, but the Palace Museum's attitude is persuasive enough. I hope the public would give the original designers a healthy environment and allow them to grow up," said a Weibo goer Ershoushou.
"They are really cute, I'll be expecting them to hit the market again after the problems are solved," said another Weibo user Oragnepudding.
"The store has successfully turned a possible dispute into a good example of protecting the intellectual property right. Great example for dealing with public relations," commented Zhonglouqingtai on Weibo.
The Palace Museum is a forerunner among its contemporaries in the cultural creative industry. Most of its designs are based on cultural resources and relics of the Palace Museum. According to a report at the end of 2017, the museum has at least 9,170 types of self-developed products, with the annual turnover exceeding one billion yuan ($58 million).
The products include bookmarks, key chains, stationeries, commodities, statues and models of the antiques and relics.
"Our purpose is to connect the cultural relics and resources with the daily life, aestheticism and requirements of the public," said Shan Jixiang, curator of the museum in an interview. "We've been focusing on the smooth 'dialogue' between the traditional culture and the life dominated by the Internet."
And they have been doing well. The museum has official accounts on almost all social media platforms, such as Weibo and WeChat, and with a total of more than six million followers.
In the meantime, the country has constantly emphasized the importance of protecting IPR in recent years, as it is gearing up in building up an innovation-oriented economy.
The protection of the IPR was also highlighted during this year's Two sessions. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang reiterated in the Government Work Report that China will set up its punitive damages system for IPR infringement.
Shen Changyu, head of the State Intellectual Property Office, also said that in the past five years, a total of 190,000 cases involving IPR have been handled, with a 40-percent average rise every year. Shen also vowed that they will expedite the revision of the Patent Law and the Copyright Law.
The country will also set up a new intellectual property administration as part of the institutional reform and restructuring of the State Council, the country's cabinet, to put even more efforts in IPR protection.
Source: CGTN
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