Mr. Jason WANG and Ms. Yan ZHANG, partners at Beijing East IP Law Firm, recently published an article titled “Judgment on Identical and Similar Goods and Services Related to Real Estate” on the China Trademark magazine (Issue 7, 2015). The China Trademark magazine is a monthly magazine supervised under the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC, who oversees Chinese Trademark Office and Trademark Review and Adjudication Board) and hosted by the China Trademark Association.

The article summarizes and discusses the judgment on identical and similar goods and services related to real estate.

First, after summarizing various cases and the special nature of the real estate related products, the article systematically analyzes the different opinions of the local courts and the China Supreme Court: Whether the scope of protection of Class 36 and Class 37 (the management of real property and construction services) cover the real estate itself, and whether the real estate services and the related goods constitute similar.

Second, the article respectively analyzes the applicable trademark registrations in different Classes and the different types of liability for trademark infringement for three different stages of the real estate, namely, construction, marketing, and residency after delivering the real estate is delivered to the end users.

Third, after analyzing the retrial ruling of the China Supreme Court rendered in 2012 as well as another three retrial judgments of the China Supreme Court rendered in February 2015, the article probes into the nature of the names of building after putting into service and the ways of bearing the liability for trademark infringement.