News

The Shanghai Intellectual Property Court concluded a trademark infringement lawsuit raised by the French wine manufacturer Chateau Lafite against Shanghai Mellowines Development Co Ltd and its parent company Shanghai Safe International Logistics.

Chateau Lafite Rothschild owns the English trademark Lafite in China since 1997, and filed a trademark application for the Chinese version of Lafite, a decade later. Its application was first rejected by the SAIC and in 2017, the trademark registration was finally approved.

In May 2015, Lafite found that Shanghai Mellowines sold...

The Beijing IP court issued a judgement on 25. December 2017 in a case concerning graphical user interface (GUIs). The dispute is between Qihu, the plaintiff and its competitor Jiamin.

Qihu holds a design patent entitled “computer with GUI”, the patent protection included a computer which displayed the GUIs. Qihu claimed that the Jianmin Optimization Expert product used a GUI that was similar to one protected by its patents. In that respect, Qihoo requested the court to order the cessation of the infringement and sought compensation of RMB 10 millions for the damage suffered. The...

Since 2014, sound marks are registrable as a trademark in China after the amendment of the Trademark Law of the People’s Republic of China. Thus, start or ending songs of programs or musical advertisements can seek a protection by the Trademark Law. However, until 2018, only 21 sound marks were allowed to be registered out of a total of about 500 sound marks application.

BMW AG applied for a sound mark registration including a piece of instrumental used in commercial activities and at the end of BMW commercials. First, its application was rejected on grounds of the lack of...

Daniel Albrecht

When cyber security not only protects interests of the masses but ultimately also safeguards national sovereignty

In order to effectively address the challenges of attacks on IT systems, cybersecurity measures have been intensified internationally in the latest years. Germany, the EU and China have launched significant legislative initiatives in the last two years. However, the approach and the coverage of the regulations differ considerably in some areas.

I. Germany: IT Security Act ...

Lego Group sued two Chinese companies for manufacturing and selling products that were almost identical to ones from the Lego Friends range. The leading European toymaker claimed that the logo and the packaging used by the Chinese companies under the brand Bela constitute an infringement of the copyright in Lego Group’s logo and packaging.

The issue raised before the Court was whether products sold under the brand Bela infringe Lego’s copyrights, and in this direction, constitutes an act of unfair competition. On September 2017, the Shantou Intermediate People’s Court ruled in...

E-Commerce is a hot topic, and hence already widely discussed. This Seminar offers the opportunity, to not only learn about e-Commerce from a business point of view, but moreover find out about crucial aspects and challenges of e-Commerce from the perspective of Law.

Topic 1: Legal problems In the Chinese e-commerce market
- Entry models into the Chinese e-Commerce market
- Legal issues when entering the Chinese e-Commerce market
- IPR Protection
- Take Down-Procedure of online shops

Topic 2: E-Commerce Platforms like Tmall and...

With the development and usage of World Wide Web, mobile internet and mobile phones, the Chinese E-Commerce market got an enormous growth. According to “Chinese E-Commerce Market Data Monitoring Report 2016”, the E-Commerce transaction amount reached 22.97 trillion RMB in 2016.

For both Chinese and international enterprises, to join this market is a trend but also a necessity. As one of the mainly path for entering E-Commerce market, the meaning of domain name registration is therefore getting more and more important.

Worldwide exist 330 million registered domain names...

On December 11, 2017, the first German-Chinese-Business Dialogue of our Frankfurt partner law firm BLUEDEX took place in Tower 185 . The event marked the beginning of our joint cooperation.

Future events with German-Chinese-commercial relations will follow soon. The first event was a great success with about 30 participants from companies, banks and insurance companies.

The following persons have submitted:

· Daniel Albrecht - German lawyer , located in China: German-Chinese labor law issues

· Marco Mezger - German entrepreneur in China / Asia:...

At Friday night, November 24th 2017, Starke Managing Counsel Daniel Albrecht, was delighted to be a guest of the ILF Frankfurt Alumni meeting in Beijing, China. The Institute for Law and Finance (ILF) is a center for academic excellence in teaching and research. It was established as a non-profit foundation in 2002 by Goethe University Frankfurt am Main with the support of many prominent institutions. Leading commercial banks and international law firms, the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the City of Frankfurt and the State of Hesse, as well as the European Central Bank and...

The 2017 Global Intellectual Property Ecology Congress was held in Beijing on November 18, organized jointly by IPRdaily and Capital Intellectual Property Services Association. Theme of this Event was “Establish the new partnership between Intellectual property agencies under ’One Belt and One Road’ initiative”.

Topics like new opportunities for IP, Ideas of IP cooperation under “One Belt and One Road” initiative; new future for IP, IP+Technology; IP capitalism, IP+Finance were discussed by the participants. GIPC 2017 invited 800 industrial elites from more than 300 companies of 15...

At 21st November 2017, Starke Managing Counsel Daniel Albrecht joined a working breakfast with the President of the European Patent office in the NUO Hotel of Beijing. As the patent office for Europe, EPO is an intergovernmental organisation which supports innovation, competitiveness and economic growth across Europe. The core activity of EPO is the search and examination of patent applications and the grant of European patents, while also providing patent information and training services. The organization works in close co-operation with the patent offices of European Union member states...

We are proud to announce that our Managing Counsel Daniel Albrecht have been successfully chosen as a winner of a 2018 International Advisory Experts Award. He won the award as:

Corporate Law Lawyer of the Year in China

International Advisory Experts is a global alliance of well-established and experienced legal, financial and consulting firms that are committed to providing clients with specialist solutions for their international business requirements.

The group currently has experts from over 140 jurisdictions and...