Last Friday was the Lantern Festival, one of the most important Chinese festivals, and the traditional food for that day is tangyuan, or dumplings made of glutinous rice flour and sweet fillings.

Ningbo city in Zhejiang province is believed to be the place where the famous snack was invented, but even in Ningbo, most tangyuan sold in supermarkets are not local products.

Although many producers, including some market leaders across the nation claim their products are "Ningbo tangyuan" or "Ningbo-flavor tangyuan", very few of them are actually based in the city, said executives from an association representing Ningbo tangyuan manufacturers.

Some 30 local tangyuan producers, material providers and sellers founded the organization in 2010 to lobby for a collective mark that only local producers could use.

Wang Chaoqun, general manager of Ningbo San Xue Food Co, a member of the association, told local newspaper Qianjiang Evening News that the local companies' products are not competitive largely because of their lower output and their high cost relative to rivals from outside Ningbo.

"Traditional Ningbo tangyuan is made of glutinous rice flour, lard, sugar and black sesame," she explained. "We have experimented over and over again and found that we can only make the food by hand using the four materials.

"If we introduce mechanized production lines, which will surely increase efficiency, we have to use food additives, and that is not the authentic way," she added.

Without the collective mark, companies outside the region "will be free to use the name", said Zhou Dingyue, secretary-general of the association.

"Local companies will suffer great losses, and there will be an even worse effect when an outside product with poor quality also bears the name."

News portal Zhejiang Online quoted Zhou, who said, "Local producers find it hard to compete with outsiders in production scale, logistics and marketing, so we have to make ourselves strong first while talking about intellectual property".

The first attempt to register the trademark in 2010 was rejected by the national trademark administration because the mark contains the name of a city.

According to Chinese trademark law, the name of a region above the county level cannot be registered as a trademark, with the exception of a collective mark or certification mark.

So the association appealed the rejection but there has not been an answer.

Industry insiders said the newly revised trademark law, which will take effect on May 1, could signal a change in fortune for the alliance of producers because it rules that the Trademark Appeal Board must make a decision in nine months after an appeal, whether approving it or not.

The association also applied for a trademark for its name, which was granted at the end of last year. Some member companies have started using the mark, but industry insiders said the mark is not prominent enough to protect the local brands.

They also suggested that applying for a geographical indication might be another solution.

While a collective mark can be only used by the association's members, a geographical indication, as a type of certification mark, can be used by a company that receives a license by the association and meets its qualifications.

zhangzhao@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 02/19/2014 page17)