Weekly China Trademark News Updates

March 15, 2021

1. “Clubhouse” trademark filings exploded 

Clubhouse is an invitation-only audio-chat iPhone app launched in April 2020 and has been praised as “Audio Twitter.” Clubhouse was already valued at USD 100 million during its testing phase with only 5000 users. In February 2021, after the completion of US $100 million series B funding, the valuation has reached USD 1 billion. Beginning in February 2021, after the famous entrepreneur-celebrity Elon Musk began using Clubhouse, it caught fire in China. New users and fans from China poured into Clubhouse and attracted trademark squatters’ attention. As of March 9, 2021, there are 38 “Clubhouse” filings and 32 of them were filed in 2021. 4 of them that were applied in June 2020 were refused for registration.

2. The Supreme People’s Court presented work report at the Two Sessions

The 2021 Two Sessions took place from March 4 to 11. In the 2021 government work report, “strengthening intellectual property protection” and improve technology innovation capacity were re-affirmed.

President of the Supreme People’s Court (“SPC”) Qiang ZHOU presented the SPC’s work report. In 2020, the SPC closed 35,773 cases, local courts closed 28.7 million cases and ordered a total of RMB 710 million (USD 109 million) in damages and fines.

“Intellectual property rights” appeared multiple times in the report. Among them, 466,000 first instance intellectual property cases were closed, up 11.7% year on year. Ten judicial interpretations and regulatory documents regarding intellectual property civil litigation evidentiary documents were issued, including further facilitate interest parties adducing evidence, shorten the litigation cycle, reduce legal enforcement cost, increase the amount of damages, and the amount damages ordered for intellectual property cases increased by 79.3% year on year. The report further states that the SPC will focus on publishing judicial interpretation, implement punitive damages system, implement heavy punitive damages on counterfeits, bad faith filings, and free riders of copyright and trademark infringements. And, as one of the measures to improve the construction of service free trade pilot zone, establish the Hainan free trade port intellectual property court

In addition, in the section of “comprehensively building a one-stop diversified dispute resolution and litigation service mechanism,” the people’s court mediation platform is fully implemented to complete the “total to total” online litigation and mediation docking with the All China Federation of Industry and Commerce, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the CNIPA and other departments, covering labor disputes, road and traffic accidents, finance and insurance, securities and futures, intellectual property and other disputes, so as to provide menu-style, collective, and one-stop services for the public. For the first time since 2004, the number of cases docketed by courts across the country has declined.

3. The CNIPA issued the Annual Work Guidelines for Promoting High Quality Development of Intellectual Property (2021)

The CNIPA recently issued the Annual Work Guidelines for Promoting High Quality Development of Intellectual Property (2021) and 22 task lists for 2021:

• To continuously improve the quality and efficiency of trademark examination, stabilize the average trademark examination time at 4 months, and further reduce the time for trademark oppositions and other complex cases;
• To strictly crack down on “abnormal” patent applications filed not for the purpose of protecting innovation and bad faith trademark registration not for the purpose of use, strengthen control from the source of intellectual property filings and promote quality improvement;
• To strictly crack down on illegal acts of trademark agencies, focusing on providing agency services for bad faith trademark hoarding and trademark squatting.

The said tasks and objectives would have a certain impact on the judgments and suggestions on the practices of granting and affirming trademark rights.

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