China Law Blog

In its post, "Why I Should Stop Reading IP Case Summaries in the News," China Hearsay does a great job attacking a Xinhua news story on what appears to have been a legal victory by Apple Computer in a trademark lawsuit. China Hearsay is justifiably ticked off about the misstatements in and extreme vagueness (can something be extremely vague?) of the article and in attacking the article, actually (inadvertently) does a really good job setting out a couple of key China trademark law basics.

First, one does not just "register a trademark" in China. One must register one's trademark in a particular category or categories. This matters. Western companies frequently complain of someone having infringed on "their trademark" in China, when in fact there has been no infringement because the Western company actually never registered a trademark in the particular category in which the allegedly infringing product belongs. Second, unlike patents, China trademarks do not necessarily expire; one can easily renew them every ten years simply by paying a fee.

Where China Hearsay gets it wrong is to allow himself to get worked into such a lather by the media getting China law wrong. I am just so past that.

A couple of years ago reading two articles in the Western media of how Chinese companies had "stolen" the trademarks of two American companies. The facts in the articles did not ring true so I called up the two companies and asked them if they had registered their trademarks in China. Neither of them had. Turns out they were both advancing the morale boosting, but legally worthless argument that US trademarks should extend around the world.

I laughed.