Furtively looking around, he took the passage reserved for travelers with nothing to declare.

But the customs officers stopped him and put his luggage through an X-ray machine, revealing a swag of Nokia-branded mobile phones.

Minutes later, another man going to board the same international flight from Kunming to Dacca at noon Friday was found carrying 243 "Nokia" mobile phones in his trunk.

Both the Bangladeshi men failed to provide legal certificates to prove the source of the phones, which had no batteries, chargers or packaging.

Customs police suspected the phones might be counterfeit and withheld them temporarily for further evaluation by Nokia technicians.

If confirmed as counterfeit, Airport Customs chief Yang Zejun told Xinhua, the items would be seized in line with the law. As they remained under investigation, the two men's names were not revealed.

Yang said an increasing number of companies from home and broad were working with Customs to protect their intellectual property rights (IPR).

Kunming Customs figures show more than 1,000 fake Nokia cell phones had been found so far this year. During the first quarter, problematic imports and exports worth more than 300,000 yuan had been intercepted at the airport, compared to 400,000 yuan for the whole of last year.

Given that Chinese law authorizes Customs authorities to protect the trademarks, copyright and patent rights of IPR owners only after the owner has filed IPR records with the General Administration of Customs (GAC), Yang said, many domestic brand names were also starting to realize the necessity of Customs protection.

"Compared to foreign IPR owners, however, domestic companies using the service remain a minority," said Yang.

In Yunnan for instance, only 20 domestic IPR owners had applied to the GAC for customs protection.

"The figure is far too low compared to the legion of IPRs owned by local companies as IPR infringements of domestic brand names are pretty much new. Many local companies are yet to realize the necessity of Customs protection," said Sun Xiaomei, chief of the Regulations Unit of the Kunming Customs on Tuesday.

With China's growing manufacturing capability, exports were no longer dominated by companies who ventured into the global market by accepting customers' materials for processing and assembly, she said. Instead, an rising proportion of exports came from domestic producers with independent intellectual property rights.

Sun called on Chinese companies to follow foreign enterprises in filing IPR records with the GAC so as to help Customs authorities stop counterfeit goods at borders.

In one case last year, about 245 cartons of counterfeit cigarettes, with domestic brand names Hongta, Yuxi and Honghe, were detected at Mengding Port. In 2006, Customs officers seized 6,400 cell phones illegally labeled with the Chinese brand name "999" at Simao Port before they were exported.

In the southern port of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, Customs protection was enforced in 4,600 cases last year, the highest in the country and nine times the number of the previous year. But about 95 percent of cases involved foreign companies.

Under Chinese law, applications, once approved, are valid for 10 years and allow Customs to stop fake products at the border and use international cooperation to halt smuggling and counterfeiting networks.

Companies vulnerable to IPR infringements are often involved in the production of clothing, footwear and hats, food, drinks, pharmaceutical and medical appliances, machinery and electronics, discs and software.