On April 25, 2016, Beijing High Court as the second instance court rendered the final and effective decisions on three trademark oppositions against “Face book” filed by a Chinese individual.  Beijing High Court held that trademark application of the opposed marks “Face book” in Classes 29, 30 and 32 covering the goods such as potato chips, coffee-based beverages, and fruit juice [beverages] was in obvious bad faith of copying and imitating third parties’ marks with high fame, which disturbed the registration and administrative order of trademark, jeopardized the market order of fair competition, and violated the principle of public order and good social custom.  Accordingly, Beijing High Court affirmed the decisions of Beijing First Intermediate Court (the first instance court), which ordered the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board (TRAB) to revoke the TRAB decisions approving the registration of the opposed marks and to render new decisions.  Facebook, Inc., as the U.S. owner of the trademark of FACEBOOK, won the three lawsuits.

These three lawsuits reflected the tremendous trend in recent practice that Chinese courts have been strengthening the efforts on cracking down the bad faith filing of the trademark applications in China.  Namely, the Chinese courts may deny the registration of the trademark applications which are in obvious bad faith of copying and imitating third parties’ marks with high fame.  And the Chinese courts may apply Paragraph 1 of Article 41 of the old Chinese Trademark Law (2001), or Paragraph 1 of Article 44 of the new Chinese Trademark Law (2013), against the scenario where the trademark registrant obtains the trademark registration “by deceptive or any other unfair means.”

Mr. Jason WANG, the managing partner at Beijing East IP Law Firm and his team, represented Facebook, Inc. and won the victory in both the first instance and the second instance.  These three lawsuits have been covered by numerous media reports, including the websites (see links below) of Beijing High Court and the Supreme People’s Court, Wall Street Journal and The TIME.

Beijing High Court website

http://bjgy.chinacourt.org/article/detail/2016/04/id/1847770.shtml

The Supreme People’s Court website

http://www.chinacourt.org/article/detail/2016/04/id/1847894.shtml

Wall Street Journal

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/05/09/facebook-wins-a-trademark-battle-in-china/

The TIME

http://time.com/4322501/china-facebook-trademark-zuckerberg-zhujiang/