intellectual property

On April 21, 2020, China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) released its report on the 10 significant cases and the 50 typical cases in the field of intellectual property for the year 2019.[1]

The decision of the SPC on one of the 10 significant cases regarding trademark infringement of the trademark HONDA provides an instructive guidance for determination of trademark infringement in OEM export trading .

The infringed trademarks in this case are the three “HONDA” trademarks of Honda Motor Co. Ltd. which are registered for vehicles, motorcycles in class 12. The...

In the retrial of the trademark administrative dispute case “red sole” between Christian Louboutin and the CNIPA , the Supreme People’s Court dismissed the claim of the CNIPA on Dec. 24, 2019. The application of retrial was rejected, the decision of the Beijing Higher People’s Court was maintained.

According to decision of the Beijing Higher People’s Court in December 2018 , the trademark “red color that used on the sole” is to be considered as a mono-color trademark that the using position of the color is defined. The Beijing Higher People’s Court affirmed, mono-color...

On September 26 2019 we received a delegation from the China National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Economic Department of the Chinese Embassy in Berlin in the offices of our partner law firm BLUEDEX, in Frankfurt.

The high-ranking delegation visited us practitioners to get more information about the German insolvency law, in particular about the liquidation of large companies.

BLUEDEX Partner Dr. Herrmann contributed to the details in a 90 minute presentation and also reported comprehensively on the innovations of the EU, which now have to be implemented...

ECTA Annual Conference completed on last Friday in Edinburgh. With more than 1500 Members, coming from all Member States of the EU and beyond, ECTA promotes the knowledge and professionalism of the Intellectual Property Law community in the fields of Trade Marks, Designs, Copyright and other Intellectual Property Rights, within the European Union. Starke is a member since 2019.

With about 900 attendees this Annual Conference was a great success! Our team took part at many interesting discussions, speeches and other programs.

Two of the highlights were the session about EU...

On June 12, 2019, the eCOMMERCE DAY of the Austrian retail association took place in Studio 44 under the motto "The Gamechanger".

The full-day event „eCommerce Day“ #thegamechanger is the meeting place of the eCommerce industry and dealt with the current trends and challenges in online trading. One focus of the event was the cross border strategies in eCommerce.

Trade association president Stephan Mayer-Heinisch opened the eCommerce Day 2019 and reviewed the past 19 years since the first edition of the industry event. Much has happened since then: Facebook and Google...

Starke in the news again. The China court official online portal reports about our trademark case that we ran together with our partner Jingsh Law .

This announcement shows the importance of our case and will race the chances to get a high damage compensation for our client Hörmann.

Hebei Huoman unauthorizedly uses similar trademarks of our client on their products and advertising. The regional market supervisory authority has already stated that Huoman has infringed the Unfair Competition Law and has issued a fine.

The volume of trademark applications in China has consistently been growing in the past 15 years. This growth, together with the fact that China is a first-to-file trademark system, has led to the proliferation of so-called ‘pre-emptive trademark applications’, filed in bad faith. Bad faith refers to the filing of a trademark that the applicant knows to have been used and developed by another brand. This is done with the intention of making a profit out of it, by selling the trademark back to the brand. Until now, the law made it easy for the so called “professional squatters” to file such...

In March 2019, for the first time a case on copycat design was ordered in favor of an overseas manufacturer. Since the rise of the Chinese vehicle-making industry, the nation's home brands have been accused of creating copycat vehicles that are almost like-for-like duplicates of popular models sold by international car-makers. However, local law has traditionally protected these Chinese brands in legal disputes, claiming that the designs are different enough to legally pass as their own models.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), part of Tata Motors Ltd, sued Jiangling Motors Corp. Ltd. (JMC...

Trademarks are used to distinguish the goods and services from different trademark owners. Trademarks are unique names, symbols, or logos which have distinctive characteristics.

Trademarks are categorized into product marks, service marks, certification marks and collective marks. And the elements that can combine a trademark include (Chinese) characters, figures, letters of the alphabet, sound, colour combinations, 3-dimensional symbol and their combinations according to the Article 8 of China Trademark Law. A trademark seeking registration shall be so distinctive as to...

On November 14th, 2018 the Beijing Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce issued the largest trademark infringement case decided by the Beijing Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce in the past twenty years – the trademark infringement of the “Onitsuka Tiger” branded ASICS sneakers, with a fine of 55.87 million RMB.

ASICS is a Japanese limited corporation which has registered many trademarks , including those with the word “tiger”. In December of 2017, the Fengtai Branch of the Beijing Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce,...