A Yomiuri article reveals that Chinese and Taiwanese firms are copying the names of famous Japanese brands and registering them as official trademarks in their countries. Here’s an excerpt:
An official of the Beijing JETRO office warned that Japanese regional brands should urgently check into whether they should lodge protests with Chinese authorities to protect their trademarks that Chinese or Taiwanese firms have already registered or are planning to register.
Last month, the Kagoshima prefectural government filed a complaint with Chinese authorities against a Chinese firm that had registered the name Kagoshima as its trademark.
According to the Beijing JETRO official, as of the end of December, Chinese or Taiwanese firms had registered 36 of Japan’s 47 prefectural names as trademarks, with the name Kyoto seeing the greatest number of registrations at 93.
Most companies using Japanese brands are Chinese firms, although individuals also did so.
By using Japanese brands as trademarks, Chinese firms can benefit free of charge from name recognition to raise their products’ prices when marketing them in China.
[via FG]
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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 3:34 pm and is filed under General Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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7 Comments »
Comment by the overthinker
2008-04-10 17:01:14
Why am I so not surprised?
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Comment by shazzb0t
2008-04-10 20:14:36
Seriously. China is a mess.
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Comment by the overthinker
2008-04-10 23:42:48
Yeah. Just as well I already registered “China” as a trademark, or I’d really be upset….
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Comment by Bonesdog
2008-04-11 09:28:26
Welcome to international business. First one with their foot in their door to register a name wins, unless the party previously using the name challenges them within a set period of time (which I believe they said on the news was something like 3 months?).
A couple of years ago there was a US biotech company that was decoding complete DNA strings for various crops and then copyrighting that DNA data, as if they created evolution or something. There was a traditional Indian “brand” (basmati?) they copyrighted that p***ed the Indians off as that name refers to a certain area of India, or the rice that comes from there.
Then there were internet domain name squatters…
So China isn’t alone in this practice. Not that they don’t still deserve scorn and opprobrium and all that…
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