In China's current business environment, every investment in building a brand involves great risks. When overcapacity strikes and price pressures increase, many companies in China opt to use other people's brand image to sell their products.
The number of new trademark applications in China has risen dramatically to around 600,000-700,000 annually. Up to 12% of these are "bad faith" applications. The methods used by the pirates for maliciously registering trademarks similar to known brands get more sophisticated all the time. The authorities are unable to scrutinise all of the incoming applications properly, and the efficacy of established trademark agents is often inadequate.
The situation is aggravated by the complexity of the Chinese language – the relationship of script characters to sound, shape, the flexible availability of top-down or horizontal, left-right or right-left, reading direction - this unique language situation is often manipulated by bad faith registrants to file trademarks virtually identical to existing brands.
The risks are growing for firms with well known and valuable brands.
The casualty list is endless.
Who is the hidden hand? We have identified a business sector consisting of professional fraudsters in China who file marks similar to well known brands for the goal of extortion or to on-sell the marks to small manufacturers who use them to make short-term profits.
What happens if your brand is affected by counterfeiters? What happens if low quality or dangerous products come to market under your brand name? What happens if this attracts adverse publicity that damages your brand and undermines your market position?
ChinaWhys and associates offer a range of services to help protect your trademarks.
Multiple manual review of all incoming trademark applications every month, leaving ample time for our client to be alerted and to decide whether to launch opposition.
Intelligent registration strategies whereby protection is extended to adjacent territories and similar marks (with respect to character/sound and shape).
Interact with the Trademark Office, facilitating actions to block rogue trademark applications in the pipeline and to overturn accomplished bad faith registrations.
