Brand awareness lagging

The accumulated number of registered trademarks applied for by domestic enterprises in other countries reached 7,100 by the end of last year, while the number of applications by foreign enterprises was 223,000. The disparity shows that the brand awareness of Chinese enterprises lags behind their foreign counterparts, Li Jianchang, director of the trademark office under the State Administration for Industry and Commerce said at a recent forum.

Chairman of All-China Federation of Industry & Commerce Sun Xiaohua agrees. He says, "The development of China's own brands is still weak compared to other countries, which does not fit China's status in global economy and trade. Many enterprises lack the awareness of trademark protection, so Chinese well-known trademarks are often maliciously registered in other countries."

Free IPR courses

People can easily access IPR courses at any time through the Internet at the Jiangsu province city of Wuxi sub-site of China's long-distance IPR education platform (http://wuxi.ciptc.org.cn) which opened recently. All its study resources are open to the public for free.

This year is the promotion year for "building Wuxi by quality and IPR", a campaign to improve the city's enterprises and institutions' IPR abilities. It is aimed at IPR education and training in order to increase competitiveness and encourage independent thought and innovation and to build IPR teams. The Wuxi Intellectual Property Office on the sub-site is the first one at the city level across the nation.

Hi-tech Olympics

The amount of domestic and foreign patent applications related to the Hi-tech Olympics in China has exceeded 320 and the amount of granted patents is more than180, according to information from the China Beijing International Hi-tech Expo and Hi-tech Olympics Exhibition opening on May 21.

Hi-tech Olympics covers scientific and technological innovation in the auto, information and environmental protection fields.

The sponsor of Hi-tech Olympics Exhibition, the Ministry of Science and Technology, proposed the Hi-tech Olympics concept after China won the 2001 competition to host the 2008 Olympic Games.

Lawsuit accepted

Beijing SuperStrong Science and Technology Co Ltd has filed a complaint at a local court against American PNY Technologies, Inc, requesting that PNY Technologies immediately stop using the trademark "PNY" and compensate them with 3 million yuan. The Beijing First Intermediate People's Court has accepted the case.

In June 2003, Beijing SuperStrong filed a trademark application to register "PNY" and it was granted on January 21, 2005. However PNY Technologies later filed an application to cancel Beijing SuperStrong's PNY trademark "PNY," because it claims that it had not been used for three consecutive years.

PNY Technologies says it was established in 1985, and used "PNY" as its trade name and on its website. On March 2, 2005, PNY Technologies filed an application to register "PNY" for class 9 goods. At present PNY's application is under trademark review after being rejected by the Trademark Office.

Beijing SuperStrong contends that, in August 2007, PNY Technologies started to use the mark "PNY" on many products without authorization and advertised the products with the mark on its website.

(China Daily 06/02/2008 page9)