Brand Wars: China steps up to the plate against trademark squatters

For the past four decades, foreign companies have been confronted with Chinese trademark squatting. Trademark squatting, in which someone else registers your trademark, suddenly prevents you from using your brand in China. Causing massive headaches every year, foreign companies are often left with little choice but to cough up huge sums to buy back the trademark, rebrand their product or fight for the right to use the brand through lengthy legal battles.

But has all this changed with the latest amendment to China’s Trademark Law? Since the end of 2019, the amended law was introduced to prevent trademark squatting with bad intentions.

Join Ai-Leen Lim, CEO and Principal Counsel of AWA Asia, with more than 23 years of experience advising clients on IP portfolio management and strategy in China, on Tuesday, July 27, 2021, at 4 PM CET for this webinar exploring how the bad-faith principle is being applied by the administrative authorities and the courts in practice 18 months since it entered law.

Moderated by IPWatchdog’s Gene Quinn, you will leave this webinar with a better understanding of the great strides the world’s most populous nation has made in combatting trademark squatting and how you can take advantage of the bad-faith principle.

In addition to answering questions throughout the webinar, Ai-Leen will touch upon:

• What is necessary to fulfill the requirement of “bad faith” in the battle against squatters
• Greater transparency of opposition and invalidation decisions
• How China’s four IP Courts are applying additional guidelines
• How brand owners should handle multiple proceedings in China (concurrent judicial and administrative proceedings)
• Best practice tips to design the ultimate China trademark strategy

Please click here to sign up 

About the speakers 

Ai-Leen Lim leads AWA’s Asia practice as CEO and Principal Counsel, managing its headquarters in Hong Kong and its wholly owned Chinese IP consultancy in Beijing. She is admitted as an advocate and solicitor in Singapore and is qualified to practise in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.  Ai-Leen has worked with some of the world’s most valuable brands and innovation-rich companies on intellectual property, advertising, consumer law, social media and the related regulatory issues in conjunction with market entry and product promotion in China.  She has been consistently recognised for her work through rankings and awards from leading industry publications including Chambers and Partners, The Legal 500, World Trademark Review and Managing IP. Most recently she was listed as a Global Leader by World Trademark Review.

Gene Quinn is a US Patent Attorney, the founder of IPWatchdog.com and a Top 300 IP Strategist.  Gene writes about patent law, patent and innovation policy, proposed legislation, rulemaking, software patents and more. In 2014, Mr. Quinn was named one of the top 50 most influential people in IP by Managing IP Magazine. In both 2017 and 2018, he was recognized by IAM Magazine as one of the top IP strategists in the world. Regarded as an expert on software patentability and U.S. patent procedure, Mr. Quinn regularly advises attorneys and clients on patent matters, litigation strategy and appeals.