The July 9 issue of the SIPO Newspaper/ Trademark Weekly (http://www.tmweek.com/yw_list_danye.asp?newsid=1624) reports that Nike and Kobe Bryant are involved in the latest skirmish with an alleged trademark squatter. A natural person in Fujian person has applied for a mark in class 18 for “科比 KB-KOBE” and obtained a registration against the opposition of Nike. Nike asserted before the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board that the mark infringed Kobe Bryant’s personality rights (rights to the name), and was in bad faith, and has since appealed the matter to the Beijing Number 1 Intermediate Court. Continue reading
Category Archives: Customs
Simulating the China IPR Enforcement case
For the past few years, I have been conducting moot court simulations of DS/362, the WTO US-China IPR “enforcement case” with students and colleagues at Fordham University and elsewhere. The heart of DS/362 was the US’s argument that, by establishing prosecution and conviction thresholds that were too high, China did not provide an adequate criminal remedy to address commercial scale counterfeiting and piracy. The WTO panel determined that the United States had not made out an adequate case that China did not, in fact, provide such protection. The U.S. argued that China had not complied with an earlier request, under “Article 63” of the TRIPS Agreement, to provide additional data (including cases) about its IPR enforcement system that would have been germane to the case, while the panel believed that such data would not have been difficult to obtain. Continue reading
Other perspectives on Apple/Proview
Last week, we had a group of Chinese IP officials visiting Fordham – from Chinese Customs, a local Administration for Industry and Commerce and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate – it was a perfect combination of officials to ask about the Apple / Proview case from the perspective of different Chinese government agencies, other than the courts. Continue reading
