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Our China lawyers regularly receive inquiries from companies (and other lawyers) asking if an email they have received from China is legit. The email usually goes something like this:
Dear [owner of US trademark]:
According to our trademark research team, the following mark has been published in the Chinese Trademark Gazette on [date]. We note that this mark is identical to a registration owned by your company.
[details of allegedly published mark]
The Chinese Trademark Office has already completed its examination of this mark and the mark is now open to opposition until [deadline]. The deadline is not extendable. If no one files an opposition before the deadline, the mark will proceed to registration.
Please let us know if we can be of assistance in opposing this mark.
[name of Chinese IP firm]
A lot of scams come out of China, including several we write about regularly: the bank account scam, the fraudulent company scam, the fake company scam, and the domain name scam. The first three are “carrots,” luring the mark with a promise of potential riches. The latter is a “stick,” offering assistance with a problem the mark didn’t know existed (and in most cases, doesn’t exist at all). And the emails described above seem to fall into the latter category of scams.
In my experience, however, these trademark emails are oftentimes not scams at all — at least not complete scams anyway. The firm sending the email is usually a real Chinese IP firm, a copycat trademark application really has been filed, and the deadline to oppose really is pending. Though the emails are a ham-handed form of business development they do sometimes provide a valuable service by alerting US trademark owners to an infringing China trademark application.
The problem is that the emails, and subsequent interactions with these firms (if any), rarely provide the proper context. Yes, under Chinese law it is possible to oppose a trademark application. But unless the applicant is your former business partner, your odds succeeding with a trademark challenge are generally not good. It doesn’t matter that the pending application is for a mark identical to your existing U.S. trademark registration. China is a first to file country for trademarks and that means that if you wanted to protect your mark in China, you should have filed an application in China before anyone else had the chance to do so. See Register your China Trademark NOW.
Recent decisions have given a glimmer of hope to owners of famous brands and to owners opposing applications filed by notorious trademark squatters, but those exceptions are limited. For the majority of trademark owners, filing a trademark opposition will not make sense. And that’s the point. If you get one of these emails what you need is not a law firm (real or fake) with just one goal in mind: separating you from your money to pursue a China trademark challenge claim that may or (more likely) may not make sense to pursue. What you need instead is a clearly real China IP lawyer who is looking out for your interests.
This lawyer then can undertake the following analysis to determine whether and how it may make sense for you to challenge the purported China trademark filing of your company or brand name or logo:
Before deciding if or how to proceed in China against someone who is seeking to secure a China trademark for “your” name, you should first have thorough answers to the above questions.
Even better, if you do care about what happens to your name in China, file your own China trademark application now. Your costs will be less and your odds will be greater than having to file a China trademark challenge, especially since winning such a challenge only means that you now get to file for your own trademark. This beats waiting for a Chinese IP firm to tell you that you left the barn door open.
We will be discussing the practical aspects of Chinese law and how it impacts business there. We will be telling you what works and what does not and what you as a businessperson can do to use the law to your advantage. Our aim is to assist businesses already in China or planning to go into China, not to break new ground in legal theory or policy.