The monks of Shaolin Temple (少林寺) want the world to back off a little. And they're not the sort of monks you want to make angry.
The Buddhist temple whose name was made famous by dozens of kung fu movies is fighting -- and not with its hands and feet -- to protect the Shaolin trademark from encroachment by marketers with dollar signs in their eyes.
"It is our unshirkable historical responsibility to protect and rejuvenate the culture of Shaolin," said Shi Yongxin, the abbot of Shaolin Temple, quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency.
In recent months, the temple in central China has been making efforts to register "Shaolin" and "Shaolin Temple" as trademarks with the country's General Administration for Industry and Commerce, Xinhua said.
It has also set up a firm, Henan Shaolin Temple Industrial Development Co (河南少林工業開發公司), to safeguard the temple's name and ban its "abusive use" in commercial activities, the agency said.
A survey by the China Trademark and Patent Affairs Agency in 11 countries and regions on five continents showed that 117 items had been registered with the name Shaolin -- all without consulting the temple.
In China, more than 100 bus-inesses -- including automobiles, furniture, foods, spirits and medicine -- are using a Shaolin trademark.
Registration of Shaolin Temple as a trademark overseas has also been stepped up, Xinhua said. "It is in the benefit of Shaolin Temple for protecting trademarks internationally," Shi was quoted as saying.
Shaolin Temple, built in 496, is the birthplace of Shaolin Boxing, a unique combination of Buddhist and Chinese martial arts.
The militia monks of Shaolin gained notoriety during the early Tang Dynasty (618-907) by helping Emperor Li Shimin (李世民) defeat a local feudal ruler who wanted to set up a separate government by force.
But it was a spate of kung-fu movies in the 1970s -- many of them starring Hong Kong's Bruce Lee (
RSS