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On June 24, 2020, Beijing High Court, as the second instance court, rendered the final and effective judgments on five trademark invalidations against “GU DU XING QIU in Chinese” and “LONELY PLANET and GU DU XING XING in Chinese.” Ms. Yan ZHANG, Ms. Tianmei DENG and Mr. Liang YIN at Beijing East IP Law Firm represented Lonely Planet and won the victory in both the first instance and the second instance.

Beijing East IP Law Firm (referred as “East IP Law Firm”) on behalf of Beijing Great Wonder International Cultural Technology Co., Ltd. (Great Wonder), sued a company operating culture and art development in Hefei for copyright infringement and unfair competition disputes, in which East IP Law Firm filed an application for behavior preservation on behalf of the client in order to prevent the further spread of the confusion and adverse effects caused by the defendant’s behaviors.

East IP Silicon Valley Partner Dr. Liaoteng Wang talked about the weakening of the US IP system with respect to patent eligibility and China’s concurrent strengthening in those areas. The webinar is moderated by former Chief Judge Paul Michel and joined by former PTO Director David Kappos, Berkeley Law Professor Robert Merges and Associate Dean of Tsinghua Law School Dr. Guobin Cui.

On the afternoon of April 2, 2020, Chris LIU, a lawyer from Beijing East IP Law Firm, attended the third “Online Forum of IP Topic Business Class” at the invitation of the International Licensing Industry Merchandiser’s Association and Magic Bean Up, and delivered a keynote speech titled “legal regulation and response strategies against trademark preemption”.

Ms. Reiko Aoki, General Manager of DLC/GB, visited Beijing East IP in early December 2019.

Zang Baoqing, deputy secretary-general of China Trademark Association, visited Beijing East IP Ltd./Beijing East IP Law Firm with her group members on October 25, 2019 for communication about practical issues of trademark authorization and confirmation.

Thanks very much for the organizers and the host. I am very glad to share my opinions on the topic of “Some Issues on Copyright Protection of Fictional Characters”, that is, a rough framework idea of copyright protection and other aspects of protection of fictional characters. Firstly, I’d like to show you some statistic data. According to the International Licensing Industry Merchandiser’s Association (LIMA), the global retail sales of licensed commodities in 2018 is 280.3 billion US dollars. As can be seen, this is a huge industry, wherein 79% of the sales are through physical stores, and 21% through online stores. Although the proportion of online sells may not be as large as imagined, it will probably change with the development of the models and channels of online retail commodities. Our topic today relates to entertainment and characters, accounting for 43.8% of the 280.3 billion U.S. dollars, namely 122.7 billion U.S. dollars. Therefore, it is already a very large industrial chain to license fictional characters to derivative products for retail. At present, there are no accurate statistics on the Chinese market or statistics on licensing models other than retail commodities, which is believed to be a very large amount.

Beijing East IP Ltd. / Beijing East IP Law Firm received wide acclaim and high recognition from worldwide clients during the INTA 2019 Annual Meeting held at Boston, US. Among the positive feedbacks, it is of particular interest that Beijing East IP won the Best Local Counsel Award at Facebook Global Counsel Summit for the consistent high-quality service and outstanding performance.

The Third Council and Supervisory Committee of the 3rd Capital Intellectual Property Services Association reviewed and approved the “List of Trademark Professional Committee Members” on August 5, 2019, which announced the director, deputy director and members of the Trademark Professional Committee. YIN Liang from BEIJING EAST IP LTD was elected as a member of the Trademark Professional Committee.

McDonald’s “McFlurry in simplified Chinese” and “McFlurry in traditional Chinese” have been recognized as well-known trademarks by the Beijing IP Court – after the well-known recognition of “McDonald’s & Arches logo,” “McDonald’s in Chinese” and “McDelivery in Chinese” by the China Trademark office (CTMO) and the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board (TRAB).