A Chinese company has started expanding its number of outlets in north China. The English name of the stores is Natural Mill, while the Chinese characters — 無印良品 — are identical to those used by the Japanese lifestyle products brand Muji.
Unfortunately for Muji, it has no legal recourse.
In 2016, Natural Mill, whose parent company is Beijing Cottonfield Textile Corp, filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Muji’s Japanese parent company, Ryohin Keikaku Co, Ltd and its Chinese-registered company Muji (Shanghai) Commerce Corp.
Note that the plaintiff in this case was Natural Mill, the company that is knocking off the Muji trademark, while the defendant is poor old Muji.
Last year, on Christmas day, a Beijing court handed down its verdict, ruling that the plaintiff had the right to use the trademark and should be accorded due legal protections.
As a result, all of the products, product packaging and promotional literature for products sold by the defendant — including bathroom towels, face towels, duvet covers, pillowcases and bathroom accessories using the trademark or proximate versions thereof, such as 無印良品, Muji無印良品 and 無印良品Muji, would be considered to infringe the registered trademark and the defendant should accordingly cease all use of them.
Beijing Cottonfield Textile was founded in 1998; Japan’s Ryohin Keikaku was established in 1980. Unfortunately, Beijing Cottonfield Textile registered the trademark in China before the Japanese company did.
Under the Trademark Law of the People’s Republic of China, the legal guarantees accorded to the knockoff trumped the rights of the original — foreign — brand and the latter was also required to pay compensation to the tune of 626,000 yuan (US$90,190 at the current exchange rate).
This, one may presume, is an example of rule of law with Chinese characteristics.
Not long ago, US President Donald Trump and US Vice President Mike Pence, on separate occasions, accused China of exploiting its market advantage to plunder and plagiarize the intellectual property rights of US companies operating in China.
However, the Muji trademark infringement case takes the whole thing to a new level. It is like the mistress doing away with the wife and then asking the wife to pay compensation.
A few years ago, when I was riding on a bus in Beijing, I saw an advertisement for Beijing Chang Gong Memorial Hospital (北京長庚醫院). The logo, just like the characters in its name, were identical to Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taipei, and it advertised that it specialized in treating male afflictions.
It is perfectly possible to suppose that, if the Taipei Chang Gung Memorial Hospital decided to open a branch in Beijing, it would be faced with the question of whether it can use its own name, or whether it could continue using its trademark.
The problem is not about scale; it is about the fact that it is Taiwanese, with the wrong approach to the “united front.”
Yu Kung is a businessman.
Translated by Paul Cooper
China has successfully held its Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, with 53 of 55 countries from the African Union (AU) participating. The two countries that did not participate were Eswatini and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which have no diplomatic relations with China. Twenty-four leaders were reported to have participated. Despite African countries complaining about summit fatigue, with recent summits held with Russia, Italy, South Korea, the US and Indonesia, as well as Japan next month, they still turned up in large numbers in Beijing. China’s ability to attract most of the African leaders to a summit demonstrates that it is still being
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Thursday was handcuffed and escorted by police to the Taipei Detention Center, after the Taipei District Court ordered that he be detained and held incommunicado for suspected corruption during his tenure as Taipei mayor. The ruling reversed an earlier decision by the same court on Monday last week that ordered Ko’s release without bail. That decision was appealed by prosecutors on Wednesday, leading the High Court to conclude that Ko had been “actively involved” in the alleged corruption and it ordered the district court to hold a second detention hearing. Video clips
The Russian city of Vladivostok lies approximately 45km from the Sino-Russian border on the Sea of Japan. The area was not always Russian territory: It was once the site of a Chinese settlement. The settlement would later be known as Yongmingcheng (永明城), the “city of eternal light,” during the Yuan Dynasty. That light was extinguished in 1858 when a large area of land was ceded by the Qing Dynasty to the Russian Empire with the signing of the Treaty of Aigun. The People’s Republic of China founded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has never ruled Taiwan. Taiwan was governed by the
The Japanese-language Nikkei Shimbun on Friday published a full-page story calling for Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) leadership hopefuls to be aware of and to prepare for a potential crisis in the Taiwan Strait. The candidates of the LDP leadership race must have a “vision” in case of a Chinese invasion in Taiwan, the article said, adding that whether the prospective president of the LDP and the future prime minister of Japan have the ability to lead the public and private sectors under this circumstance would be examined in the coming election. The “2027 Theory” of a Taiwan contingency is becoming increasingly
RSS