Chris Devonshire-Ellis on Brand Protection in China – Marking in English and Chinese

As regular readers will know, I'm currently in the United States on tour speaking at engagements with a host of U.S

. businesses, venture capitalists and the like, working with the U.S. Department of Commerce, with whom we wrote the highly successful "China Business Handbook" (downloadable for free). A lot of the events have concentrated equally on China and India, such as the "Dueling Tigers" program I've just spoken at in Boise. However, one of the issues that always crops up at the Q&A session is China's IP and brand protection. It's cropped up so often that here I'll explain the differences between United States and China and the issues over filing in China for both English and Chinese characters.

Firstly, let's define "trademark" as is applicable in the United States. It can be anything used to distinguish and identify the source of good s or services as follows:

* Words

* Designs (logos)

* Packaging and product configurations

* Colors

* Sounds

* Fragrances

* And combinations of these

However, China differs in that it does not recognize the categories of sound and fragrances, and further places additional criteria on other aspects as follows:

* Letters must be in a combination of three or more unless stylized

* Numbers can be marked (in combination as above)

* Three dimensional shapes

* Colors must have acquired distinctiveness.

China importantly also differs from the United States in that both English brands and their Chinese equivalent will be marked. This can be done in one of two ways:

Transliteration characters in Chinese that sound similar to the English brand. This can be dangerous famously, Coca Cola years ago did just this, but the characters they originally used were nonsensical; they actually sounded like "Bite the wax tadpole" in Chinese (they've changed it now). The lesson is that transliterations need to be handled with the utmost care and by someone completely fluent in the language.

Translation characters in Chinese that exactly translate the English name. Microsoft is a good example of this, their brand characters in Chinese mean micro, and soft.

If you don't mark your English brand in Chinese, Chinese consumers will choose one for you. The wording they choose may not reflect the international standing of your product. For example, Google did not register a Chinese version of their name, and the Chinese consumers instead began calling it something akin to the characters that sound rather like "dog dog." Once that habit gets into the Chinese system, it's very hard to break. While they have gone back and registered a more appropriate Chinese name, the consumers still refer to them as "dog dog." Google would have been much better off imposing their desired Chinese characters from the start.

Chris Devonshire-Ellis on Brand Protection in China Marking in English and Chinese

By: Chris Devonshire -Ellis

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