The CNIPA is cracking down on harmful trademark registration applications related to the Olympics
Olympic emblems, mascots, and athletes’ names have long been attractive trademark squatting targets. Famous athletes’ names, such as “Yao Ming,” “Liu Xiang,” and “Bolt,” have encountered trademark squatting.
Gu Ailing stated in June 2019 that she has become a Chinese freestyle skier. Many others registered for registration of “Gu Ailing” in Chinese, “EILEEN GU,” and other similar trademarks in China in the same month. The Beijing Winter Olympics mascots “Bing Dwen Dwen” and “Shuey Rhon Rhon” were formally published to the public on September 17, 2019, and a huge number of individuals or businesses sought for trademark registration the following day.
After Quan Hongchan won the gold medal in the women’s 10-meter platform diving event at the Tokyo Olympic Games on August 5, 2021, a slew of trademarks relating to the champion were filed almost immediately. These fraudulent trademark applications are primarily meant to exploit these people’s reputations in order to pursue illicit objectives. They not only infringe on these athletes’ name rights and other legitimate interests, but they also have a negative social impact and tarnish China’s reputation for stringent intellectual property protection.
CNIPA increases crackdown malicious trademark registration applications related to the Olympics
The China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) has taken a number of steps in recent years to combat malicious trademark registration applications of the type described above, including promoting the improvement of laws and regulations, creating an examination guidelines thesaurus, classifying and disposing of different cases, and organizing special actions, among other things.
In 2019, CNIPA formulated and promulgated “Several Rules on Regulating Trademark Filing Acts”, which clearly stipulates that “for malicious applications/registrations and those violating the principle of good faith, decisions of rejection or invalidation may be made, and the applicants can be given administrative penalties such as warnings and fines according to the circumstances.
The “Special Action Plan for Combating Malicious Squatting of Trademarks” was established by CNIPA in 2021 to combat ten sorts of typical trademark squatting behaviors, such as applications for the names of public individuals, well-known works, or well-known character names. In 2021, a total of 482,000 malicious trademark registration applications were combated; 1,111 squatting trademark registration applications were quickly rejected, of which 109 involved Olympic athletes; 1,635 registered trademarks were declared invalid ex officio, and 1,062 clues of suspected cases of significant adverse impact and malicious trademark registrations were forwarded to the local authorities.
The CNIPA is cracking down on harmful trademark registration applications related to the Olympics (Source of picture: news.abplive.com)
The 24th Winter Olympic Games were successfully conducted in Beijing in February 2022. The preservation of intellectual property rights during the Winter Olympic and Winter Paralympic Games was extremely important to CNIPA, including granted special mark protection to “Beijing 2022”, the emblem of Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, the emblem of the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympic Games; granted trademark registration to “Bing Dwen Dwen” and “Shuey Rhon Rhon” applied by the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, and granted trademark registration to “Gu Ailing” and other Winter Olympic athletes applied by qualified entities. Meanwhile, CNIPA has resolutely cracked down on the malicious squatting of Olympic mascots, the names of athletes and other Olympics hot words.
CNIPA denied 429 trademark applications in compliance with the Olympic Symbols Protection Regulations and Article 10(1) (8) of the Trademark Law such as No.41128524 “冰墩墩”（Bin Dwen Dwen）and No.62453532 “谷爱凌”(Gu Ailing); and declared 43 registered trademarks invalid ex officio including No.38770198 “谷爱凌”(Gu Ailing) in accordance with Article 44(1) of the Trademark Law.
CNIPA also mobilized local intellectual property management departments to file and investigate 24 trademark agency complaints involving squatting of Olympic Games hot word trademarks, with 13 cases receiving administrative penalties. Administrative fines were levied immediately on two trademark agencies that had committed substantial infractions in representing important malicious squatting instances, and their trademark agency licenses were revoked.
Interviews with 13 platform-based trademark agencies were undertaken in order to help them build and refine a screening process for harmful squatting trademarks, as well as to avoid representation in malicious trademark squatting or other illegal activities.
(As cited in lexology.com)
***Other Articles***
– You could see How To Register Trademark in China here.
– You could visit here to see Procedure of Trademark in China.
– You could visit here to check Required documents of filing trademark in China.
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