The Chinese National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) has recently unveiled a new plan with an aim to combat trademark squatting. CNIPA recently announced in a notice about its Special Action Plan for Combating Malicious Trademark Squatting prompting local IP offices to join their hands with CNIPA in a new push with an aim to target squatters across the country. CNIPA has identified ten malicious acts that amount to infringement or squatting. All these ten acts will be targeted as part of the special action plan. The acts of getting registered several trademarks of famous logos, names, places, and even events.
The plan is scheduled to be rolled out over three different phases which started in March only. The first step has already initiated and it involved local IP offices who helped in collecting evidence and later reports them to the trademark office till March 30. The local trademark offices with CNIPA will then review those evidence from the month of April to October for the purpose of validation. After this stage, penalties of up to RMB 100,000 will be issued to offenders. Local offices later will summarize their findings from the month of November to December and then report them to CNIPA by the 10th day of December.
The ten malicious acts - This plan of China will focus on identifying and then cracking down on the following ten acts related to malicious trademark squatting:
-
Maliciously registering the names of national or regional strategies, major activities, major policies, major projects, or major scientific and technological projects.
-
Maliciously rushing to register vocabulary and signs related to public emergencies such as natural disasters, major accidents, major public health incidents, and social security incidents.
-
Malicious pre-registration of names and logos of major events or major exhibitions.
-
Maliciously registering the names of administrative divisions, mountains, and rivers, scenic spots, buildings, and other public resources.
-
Malicious squatting on marks of public or commercial resources, including generic names and industry terms.
-
Malicious pre-registration of the names of public figures, well-known works, or character names with a relatively high reputation.
-
Malicious pre-registration of another person's trademark or other commercial marks that has a relatively high reputation or a relatively strong distinctiveness, which damages the prior rights and interests of others.
-
Obvious violation of the prohibition of Article 10 of the trademark law and other violations of public order and good custom, which have caused major negative and social impacts on the political, economic, cultural, religious, ethnic, and other social public interests and public order of China.
-
The trademark agency knows or should know that its client is engaged in the above-mentioned acts, but still accepts its instruction.
-
Other obvious violations of the principle of good faith.
China is really putting great efforts to reform its own IP protection rights over the past few years. President of China Xi Jingping has recently called for much stronger protections for China’s rights holders, with offices such as CNIPA rolling out several new initiatives very frequently to help crackdown on trademark bad-faith registrations, copycats, and squatting.
Chinese courts have instructions to award higher damages over trademark infringement. Recently, a case between New Balance and Chinese copycat brand New Barlun resulted in a ruling of RMB 25 million awards for damages. This ruling is one of the highest ever issued awards in a Chinese court. A separate document has also been issued with the purpose to rectify the handling of applications for registration of several malicious hoardings of trademarks that are never intended for any kind of use in the future.
Tags :
