Beijing Olympic Intellectual Property Transferred to International Olympic Committee

April 16, 2009

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that distributional sales of Beijing Olympics merchandise from shall cease as by April 1, 2009. Any further distribution of these goods must now obtain the consent of the Chinese Olympic Committee (COC) and approval from the IOC. If the current licensed shops continue the distribution of the said goods after that cutoff date, such acts would be deemed infringement, which would be sanctioned by the administration for industry and commerce.

According to the Beijing Olympic Committee (BOC), distribution authorization is being transferred to the COC. Any further distribution of these goods must be made under consent from the COC and approval from the IOC after April 1. According to the IOC Executive Vice Chairman Jiang Xiaoyu, one or two shops will be retained to sell these goods in special locations after April 1, but the above-described authorization from both the IOC and COC will still be required.

Since November 2005, merchandise for the Beijing Olympics has been sold in the marketplace, which includes 12 categories of more than 8,000 kinds of merchandise sold in more than 6,000 shops. It is estimated that the sales volume for Beijing Olympics merchandise has already reached 800 billion Yuan.