You don’t need to be selling in China to consider protecting your brand in this region. There are many examples of brands, both small and international, who have lost the right to sell their products in China because they discover that their brand/trademark has been registered by a Chinese company without their knowledge. Even if you don’t intend to sell into China but will be manufacturing in China, you should consider protecting your trademark.
Once the trademark is taken, it is difficult to retrieve it. It is costly to go through the courts in China. and unusual for them to rule in your favour.
Once A Chinese business owns your business trade mark, your brand can be marketed and sold international trade shows in China. If they are success at establishing a market and start manufacture, your brand can be exported from China world-wide. While your business brands maybe protected in these markets, the only way of them stopping the trade is to prosecute each importer and reseller. Normally at this stage you have lost control of your trade mark.
If you are planning to sell your products outside your national market, protecting your trade mark in China will be key to your international trading success.
In 2012 the brand owner tried to register the trademark of one of her own brands Tiddley Pom Natural Baby Spa. Unbeknown to her one of the potential distributors she had met with in Guangzhou registered her brand under their company. The fee to buy back the IP was US25,000. Despite several requests to the authorities in China the brand trademark remains with the company in China therefore preventing access to this market. The option to sell into China from Hong Kong is still possible but this would mean building the brand for the Chinese company. The brand owner decided to create and protect a new name for the Chinese market – Little Treasure. It’s not ideal to run the same products with two different names but this was the consequence of not registering the trademark in the China.
This brand has asked for their name to remain confidential. As a start up in the fashion sector, manufacturing in China was the obvious next step as they began to scale. Initially they were not interested in selling into China but manufacturing was key to their success. This brand exhibited at a trade show aimed at European brands looking for manufacturers. They discovered upon their return to the UK that one of the visitors had registered their brand name in China. This meant that they could not sell into China and manufacturing would be difficult.
We recommend that you protect your trademark even if you have no immediate plans to enter this market. As you grow you may consider licensing or exclusive manufacturing agreements which could be jeopardised if you don’t own your trademark. It could also affect the valuation of your company if you sell.
We recommend that you register your trademark in your main class but also class 35 which covers online and e-commerce.
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