Seeing China for what it really is...
The other day I had a discussion with someone (the person shall remain nameless) about their trademarking strategy in China. This person came to me a while back (after reading my blog) and asked specifically if I could recommend someone to help them with trademark filing in China. I did… I even got a “non-raping” quote from one of the top law firms in Beijing for them.
Well now, you might be starting to wonder why I am writing this. It is simple really… As soon as I had given them the quote and told them what the process would be they talked to their overseas lawyer (who btw. has never put a foot in China), and this lawyer tells them they are idiots for not filing for global protection and simply forget about individual country protection.
Good strategy, unless you are dealing with China, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, etc. and the list goes on and on… There are several cases in the past (legal challenges that this brilliant lawyer of theirs could have looked up if he knew where to look) where a global trademark has been held just to be thrown out in a Chinese court because someone has filed for the trademark locally. And yes, the local trademarks were filed for long after the global ones, so “first to file” did not help either…
There are some provisions for “well known international trademarks”, but this is a fairly small and unknown company in the scheme of things, and I am pretty sure they would not even come close to qualify for that in China. I hope they come to their senses…
So, whatever you do, just file already… It is not expensive in China and it is a lot less costly than having to fight about it in court.