What Can I Do If a Competitor Just “Stole” My China Trademark?

At the China Law Blog, Dan Harris briefly answers this question as follows:

A question we often get is from an American or a European company that has just learned that one of their competitors has registered “their” trademark in China. The question is usually along the lines of whether our firm would be interested in pursuing a bad faith claim against the “pirate” that “stole” their trademark. Our answer is usually along the following lines:

If you never registered your trademark in China, the odds of our prevailing against someone who did (whether your competitor or not) are not good. Though last year’s revisions to China’s Trademark Law theoretically strengthened the requirement that trademark applications be made in good faith, the Chinese Trademark Office still has a narrow conception of what constitutes bad faith.

The full article is available here.

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