To Prevent Fake Trademark, Famous Brand Tons of Millions Trademarks!
In China, whether international or domestic brands, there are numerous trademark infringement and cybersquatting. One classic case is US Starbucks trademark litigation in 2005. US Starbucks and Uni-President Enterprises Corp. joint venture established “Shanghai Uni-President Starbucks Corporation” in March, 2000.
The Shanghai domestic coffee shop “Shanghai Starbucks coffee shop Corporation” registered in Oct, 1999 and has two shops in Shanghai. Both companies sell coffee with similar names and signboards. In the end of 2003, therefore, US Starbucks accused Shanghai Starbucks of infringement, and in the end of 2005, court judged US Starbucks won the litigation and Shanghai Starbucks had to change trademark name and pay 500 thousand CNY to US Starbucks.
Since then US Starbucks has becoming more aggressively to register similar trademarks, such as shenbucks/xianbucks/shibucks/sbucks (similar-sounding), and Buckstar/Bustarck (change words permutation). US Starbucks applied 272 trademarks in International Classification 30, and registered 1286 trademarks in all kind of classifications to prevent that competitors counterfeit similar sound or word of “Starbucks”.
In addition to that, China famous brand Alibaba (sounds like Ali-father in Chinese) also registered many interesting trademarks for whole family like Alifather/Alimother/Alisister/Alibrother/Alibaby, and etc. They even registered Aliaunt and Aliuncle.
Another famous case is China smart phone brand – Xiaomi (sounds like little-rice in Chinese). Xiaomi registered opposite word Dami (sounds like big-rice in Chinese), and also registered all colors of rich like bluemi/redmi/greenmi/yellowmi/purplemi/orangemi for protecting their trademark to against other competitors.
The quantity of China trademark registration is top 1 in the world. However, lots of those trademarks are similar trademarks to prevent competitors and trademark NPEs. This phenomenon shows the trademark policy is still inadequate to protect the market; therefore, enterprises only register lots trademarks to protect their trademark in short-term.