If you’re crowd-funding a popular product on Kickstarter, there’s a good chance that Chinese pirates have already stolen your idea. As detailed in a recent …
The Pitfalls of Unregistered Marks
Companies that decide to produce or sell products in mainland China without first having registered their trademarks do so at their own peril. Without a …
Attacking Pirated Marks Based on Copyright
Copyright offers a potentially powerful tool for addressing piracy in China of logo marks and stylized word marks in the context of oppositions and invalidations. …
How to Register Trademarks in China
Companies large and small are filing more and more trademark applications in China to support product launches. But even companies without immediate plans to sell …
Online Counterfeiting Best Practices
China’s State Council will soon issue a draft of the country’s first E‐Commerce Law for public comment. Provisions of this proposed law may offer new …
Draft Anti-Unfair Competition Law
On February 25 2016, the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council released a draft version of an amended Anti-Unfair Competition Law (draft AUCL) for …
A Guide To China’s New Online Publishing Rules For Foreign Media
This analysis is intended to address a number of concerns that have been raised regarding China’s new Administrative Regulations for Online Publishing Services (“Online Publishing Regulations”) and …
PRC Criminal Law Tackles Data Privacy
This month we take a detour from trademark issues to cover recent developments in data privacy, a subject that has been the focus of considerable …
Assessing China’s Plan to Build Internet Power
When the Chinese Communist Party targeted clean energy in its 11th Five Year Plan (2006-2010), the resulting investment spree upended the global clean energy market almost overnight. …
Special Campaign on Protection of Disney Trademarks
On October 15, the national authority in China responsible for administrative enforcement of trademarks, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), issued a notice …
OEM Exception to Trademark Infringement
China is one of a handful of countries that permits the production and export of goods that would otherwise be deemed infringing of trademarks owned …
Merchandise Licensing: Contractual Arrangements
This is the second part of a two-part article introducing best practices in this sector. The first part focused on securing relevant IP. This part …
Merchandise Licensing: Securing Rights
The licensing of names and images from fictional works, including the names of cartoon characters and film titles, is growing exponentially in the PRC and …
Alibaba Reforms Taobao Enforcement Policies
On January 6 Alibaba announced a revamp of its TaoProtect online policing system which applies to its online sales portals www.taobao.com and www.tmall.com. Both are Chinese-language trade platforms, the prior ostensibly C2C
Should You Record Trademark License Contracts?
There are a range of legal and practical reasons for foreign trademark owners to record licenses of their registered Chinese trademarks with the China Trademark …
Revised Provisions on Well-Known Mark Recognition Issued
Following the recent amendments to the PRC Trademark Law that took effect on May 1 2014, China issued revised Well-Known Mark Recognition and Protection Provisions …
New Measures to Address Online Counterfeiting
There are clear indications that Chinese government authorities are taking more concerted actions to address online infringements of IP rights, as illustrated by new campaigns …
PRC Trademark Law Revisions in Force
Revisions to the PRC Trade Mark Law entered into effect on May 1 2014. They offer some potentially valuable weapons for addressing registry pirates as …
Support in Devising Chinese Brands
Process SIPS will first compile information on client’s priorities and “brand values” for the Chinese market, preferences of the client regarding the proposed Chinese mark …
Bad Faith Trademark Filings in China
This article provides information on strategies and best practices in dealing with bad faith trademark filings in China. The scenario is by now all too …
How to Tackle Online Counterfeiting
The ever-growing accessibility, convenience and anonymity offered by e-commerce has permitted counterfeiters to rapidly shift their business models – in some cases entirely – online. …
