Edge on China – What’s in a Name?
On first reading, of the article below, my impression was of a fairer law system in China.
On the second reading, it seemed a company trying to register it’s rights, to its trademark title, had been forced to spend a lot of money defending that title.
Would you agree that the present business environment in China is encouraging for overseas companies?
from The Australian
Sotheby’s Keeps Chinese Name
Rowan Callick, China correspondent
SOTHEBY’S feared that in China, its famous trademark was going, going, almost gone.
A Chinese company, based in the mountainous southwestern province of Sichuan, better known as the home of the panda, had brazenly appropriated the auction house’s Chinese name – Sufubi – and was using it for its own sales business.
This week, Sotheby’s won a rare victory for a foreign firm against a local company in a Chinese court, the Beijing Number 2 Intermediate Court, winning the exclusive use of the name Sufubi.
Sotheby’s has developed a substantial operation in China, including the sale of some of the hottest contemporary artists, whose works often reap millions of dollars.
The Beijing court ordered the Sichuan Sufubi Auction Company, which now has to change its name, to pay Sotheby’s $16,000 compensation and to publish an apology in the Guangming Daily newspaper.
The company said after its victory: “In addition, the court recognised the Chinese version of the Sotheby’s mark as an unregistered well-known trademark and a famous trade name.”
The win gives hope to other foreign companies that have found their names and their intellectual property appropriated while they have struggled – or failed to overcome bureaucratic and other hurdles – to have their names, brands or products registered and protected.
Australia’s second largest firm of architects, Woodhead International, has had to face a similar challenge in China.
Its former Chinese principal began to use for himself the firm’s Chinese name WuHeGuoJi, which was then swiftly registered by this rival local group while Woodhead’s formal application for registration languished.
Sotheby’s had earlier, in Hong Kong, won an easier victory – within the common law jurisdiction there – against a group of three Hong Kong-based companies that had been using the name Sufubi to promote their own less-than-prestigious auction of Chinese art.
Kevin Ching, Sotheby’s Asia chief executive, said then about his intention to pursue the Sichuan firm: “We will be arguing that Sotheby’s is an internationally famous trademark. This kind of imitation threatens our reputation.”
Despite losing the hearing in Beijing this week, the Sichuan company said it would appeal to the Higher People’s Court.
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