Chris Devonshire-ellis On Brand Protection In China Marking In English And ChineseAs regular readers will know, I currently in the United States on tour speaking at engagements with a host of U.S. businesses, venture capitalists and the like, working with the U.S. Department of Commerce, with whom we wrote the highly successful hina Business Handbook?(downloadable for free). A lot of the events have learn Chinese online 1-1 concentrated equally on China and India, such as the ueling Tigers?program Ie just spoken at in Boise.
However, one of the issues that always crops up at the Q&A session is China IP and brand protection. It cropped up so often that here Il explain the differences between United States and China and the issues over filing in China for both English and Chinese characters.Learn Chinese for kids Firstly, let define rademark?as is applicable in the United States.
It can be anything used to distinguish and identify the source of good s or services as follows: * Words * Designs (logos) * Packaging and product configurations * Colors * Sounds * Fragrances * And combinations of theseHowever, China differs in that it does not recognize the categories of sound and fragrances, and further places additional criteria on other aspects as follows: * Letters must be in a Learn Chinese lessons for teens combination of three or more unless stylized * Numbers can be marked (in combination as above) * Three dimensional shapes * Colors must have acquired distinctiveness.
China importantly also differs from the United States in that both English brands and their Chinese equivalent will be marked. This can be done in one of two ways:Transliteration ?characters in Chinese that sound similar to the English brand. This can be dangerous ? Learn Survival Chinese famously, Coca Cola years ago did just this, but the characters they originally used were nonsensical; they actually sounded like ite the wax tadpole?in Chinese (theye changed it now).