New details in 'iPhone' trademark case punctuate Apple's ongoing legal problems in China
Weeks after Apple saw its bid for exclusive Chinese rights to the "iPhone" trademark dashed in court, new information illustrates the battle the company faces in dealing with China's laws.
Citing 2001 trademark law, the Beijing Municipal High People's Court in March rejected Apple's legal appeal to secure exclusive rights to the "iPhone" trademark, upholding the mark as registered by Beijing-based leather goods maker Xintong Tiandi Technology in 2007.
A lawyer for Xintong said the company actually acquired the rights from a Russian company in 2011, The New York Times reported Wednesday. In fact, the leather goods manufacturer was established that same year.
Still, Xintong's acquired "IPHONE" trademark No. 6,304,198 holds a filing date of 2007. And since the "iPhone" name was not ubiquitous or "renowned" at the time -- the device launched in the U.S. three months prior -- Apple has no grounds for argument under Chinese law.
The definition of what qualifies as "renowed" is, of course, subjective. When it launched in China in 2009 through a deal with China Unicom, the device sold like hotcakes. By 2011, the iPhone had become the preferred smartphone for Chinese trendsetters and was thus very well known.
As for Apple, the company initially submitted a Chinese trademark application for "IPHONE" on Oct. 18, 2002, and received a registration by Nov 21, 2003. A separate trademark for "i-phone" was filed in 2004. Apple caught wind of what would become Xintong's mark in 2010, when that application was published, and moved to oppose its registration in 2012.
China's Trademark Review and Adjudication Board denied two Apple complaints citing the 2007 registration date. The Municipal People's Court found similarly on appeal. Apple has vowed to take the issue to China's Supreme People's Court. Apple has "prevailed in several other cases against Xintong" under similar circumstances, company spokesperson Carolyn Wu told The Times.
Citing 2001 trademark law, the Beijing Municipal High People's Court in March rejected Apple's legal appeal to secure exclusive rights to the "iPhone" trademark, upholding the mark as registered by Beijing-based leather goods maker Xintong Tiandi Technology in 2007.
A lawyer for Xintong said the company actually acquired the rights from a Russian company in 2011, The New York Times reported Wednesday. In fact, the leather goods manufacturer was established that same year.
Still, Xintong's acquired "IPHONE" trademark No. 6,304,198 holds a filing date of 2007. And since the "iPhone" name was not ubiquitous or "renowned" at the time -- the device launched in the U.S. three months prior -- Apple has no grounds for argument under Chinese law.
The definition of what qualifies as "renowed" is, of course, subjective. When it launched in China in 2009 through a deal with China Unicom, the device sold like hotcakes. By 2011, the iPhone had become the preferred smartphone for Chinese trendsetters and was thus very well known.
As for Apple, the company initially submitted a Chinese trademark application for "IPHONE" on Oct. 18, 2002, and received a registration by Nov 21, 2003. A separate trademark for "i-phone" was filed in 2004. Apple caught wind of what would become Xintong's mark in 2010, when that application was published, and moved to oppose its registration in 2012.
China's Trademark Review and Adjudication Board denied two Apple complaints citing the 2007 registration date. The Municipal People's Court found similarly on appeal. Apple has vowed to take the issue to China's Supreme People's Court. Apple has "prevailed in several other cases against Xintong" under similar circumstances, company spokesperson Carolyn Wu told The Times.
Comments
A Chinese leather goods company that didn't even exist until 2011, gets the rights to iPhone?
In 2011? The iPhone was released in 2007.
How corrupt and crooked is the Chinese court system? What a bunch of no good crooks and dirty rotten scoundrels.
Hopefully Apple will take this all the way up to the Chinese Supreme People's Court as soon as possible, and get this damn crooked mess straightened up.
China benefits a lot from Apple as a company, and Apple should be prepared to play hardball with the communists, when push comes to shove. I would like to see Apple flex its muscles and do whatever it takes to put a stop to this nonsense.
In the future, robots are going to solve many problems in general, not just for Apple.
Maybe that can lead to more American manufacturing also. Unlike the workers, it's not like a Chinese robot can be paid less than an American robot. They'll both make the same income, zero. They are mechanical slaves for life.
Do you remember all of the recent fast food worker strikes that have been taking place? Where these burger flipping geniuses believe that they are so highly skilled and so highly valued that some teenager still in school should be making a minimum of $15 an hour?
Companies are already coming up with their own solutions to combat the embarrassing entitlement mentality displayed by certain groups of ignorant individuals who do not grasp basic economics.
Wendy's to replace workers with machines due to rising minimum wage
http://www.fox32chicago.com/money/142139984-storyApple apparently didn't initially file for protection of its iPhone trademark in class 18 (leather goods) in China, which is somewhat understandable looking at the significance of "leather goods" in Apple's product palette, but perhaps not the best strategy for a mark that Apple could have foreseen as becoming extremely valuable.
In the meantime, a Russian company saw its opportunity and nabbed the trademark in class 18. That Russian company then sold off its rights, which is a very common thing to do, to a Chinese company. Many major US companies own trademarks that predate their own existence.
The Russian company's trademark registration was probably trying to cash in on Apple's parallel use of the mark. Many countries have laws to protect owners of "ubiquitous" trademarks from such freeloaders. However, there's a big difference between suspecting such freeloading registration of a "ubiquitous" trademark and proving it before a court of law. For example, just because many of us know the iPhone trademark now doesn't mean that mark was ubiquitous in China when that Russian company obtained its trademark. And while many countries also have laws to protect trademark owners from trademark registrations that could "water down" the older trademark, it could be that China, at the time of the Russian registration, didn't have laws like that yet. Countries are always working on fixing unforeseen loopholes in the law.
Based on the few facts I've seen (and my experience with Chinese IP law), I have no reason to believe that the Chinese court was biased, let alone corrupt or crooked as some commentators have suggested. China has made enormous progress in the realm of protecting intellectual property over the last few decades.
If you'd like to complain about an unjust patent system, how about calling your representative in Congress, asking them why it costs well over a million dollars to litigate a US patent and ask them to work on legislation to get those costs down.
A bit of an armeggdon scenario but an attempt at hardball would have the Chinese government laughing their collective socks off.
People are pricing themselves right out of the market!!! Self check out lanes in grocery stores and Home improvement stores, etc. Where you have 4 self check out lanes and 1 person watching over everyone. That's means only 1 in 4 people kept their jobs. Or 2 in 8 if there's 2 shifts. Kiosks at a fast food place is just the start. It's a quick and easy thing to start off with, which in the end will lead to robots making the food. It's already pretty standardize. Wouldn't be hard to go the next step. Then you can get rid of most everyone. Out of all the people that used to work there, you're now down to a couple people. Only there to clean the place, and restock the supplies for the machines. Go from a place that used to have 20-30 people working there, down to maybe 10 at most. They get their $15, and everyone else is unemployed. You're even starting to see this in China at Foxconn, as Labor prices go up, the Robot's are starting to come in. I expect within 10 years or less, new fast food places will be designed right from the start to use Kiosks and Robot's to do the cooking. It'll come first to the places that have $15+ wages. You do know, once the wages go up to $15, the costs of everything else creep up also so you're back where you started. In fact the people now really screwed are those making $16-$20 or so as they didn't get a raise and yet the costs of everything went up on them also, and so in effect will take a big negative hit. You have Unions that have a set base pay that's set so much above the Minimum wage, so when that goes up, so does it for the Union workers, increasing costs!!! If you want to make more money, get a Education and make yourself worth something of value to be paid more. Again, any monkey can flip a burger and push a button. I know, I used to do it!!!