Region: China

Applying Article 15 of China’s Trademark Law to tackle malicious registration

Featured in Inside China’s IP Market: a Guide 2024

Trademark squatting has many forms. If a trademark is registered by your distributor or partner, there is still a chance that the trademark can be retrieved.

27 September 2023

Trade secret litigation and arriving at a definition of ‘commensurate’ security measures

Featured in Inside China’s IP Market: a Guide 2024

Recent Supreme People’s Court judgments attempt to answer the questions of what kinds of security measures are accepted as commensurate, what the underlying theories are behind the word ‘commensurate’, and what aspects rights holders should pay attention to when adopting security measures.

27 September 2023

New measures aim to refine corporate name dispute adjudication

While new SAMR measures now provide a clear framework for handling corporate name disputes and specify some punitive measures, they only address conflicts between corporate names – not increasingly prevalent disputes between these and prior trademarks.

20 September 2023

TCL signs licence with Via LA’s ATSC 3.0 broadcasting patent pool

Via LA’s pool, which has 14 licensors, used to offer a rate of $2.75 per unit but has dropped it to $0.30 with an early-bird discount

18 September 2023

Apple’s Chinese difficulties reflect the challenges all IP owners face there

The company’s share price fell by billions of dollars last week because of investor concerns about a new Huawei device and a rumoured government ban on officials using iPhones. It was a timely reminder of the kinds of problem China poses to rights holders individually and collectively

14 September 2023

Plaintiffs’ subjective intentions underlined in infringement counterclaim ruling

The plaintiff in a trademark infringement claim was found to have weaponised the suit to disrupt its rival’s business operations. The decision shows that the courts are aiming to draw clearer distinctions between rights holders that legitimately believe that their marks are being infringed and those that use their rights in bad faith.

13 September 2023