2022 Qatar World Cup ended. In this FIFA World Cup, apart from the Argentina team winning the championship, the advertisement "HISENSE No. 1 in China, No. 2 in the world" of the Chinese company, Hisense Group Co., Ltd. should attract the most attention from the fans.
This advertisement not only shows its brand "HISENSE", but also vigorously promotes its trade name, which let the consumers in more and more countries know about Chinese brands.
Many other Chinese brands, such as: Mengniu, Wanda, VIVO, etc, also dominate the of this World Cup advertisement.
A Chinese saying goes that "food and fodder should go before troops and horses." While in trademark protection, a similar saying goes that "trademark shall go before the market exploit". In business activities, it is important to plan trademark protection in advance.
However, in this World Cup, still a lot of elements have been snapped up for trademarks.
Searching on CNIPA online data base, it was found that the name "拉伊卜" of the mascot of the World Cup in Qatar had been preemptively filed. You will see the trademark applications in the table below.
No. | App. No. | Cl. | Trademark | Applicant | Filing date |
1 | 68119701 | 35 | 拉伊卜 | Gaodita (Guangzhou) Meidical Appratus Technology Co., Ltd. | 2022/11/3 |
2 | 68119701 | 41 | 拉伊卜 | Gaodita (Guangzhou) Meidical Appratus Technology Co., Ltd. | 2022/11/3 |
3 | 68125875 | 19 | 拉伊卜 | Wang Jianli | 2022/11/3 |
4 | 68416918 | 25 |
| Su Qiuru | 2022/11/18 |
5 | 68413921 | 18 |
| Su Qiuru | 2022/11/18 |
The real IP owner of the mascot shall take measures for its IP protection in China in advance. We will see how the CNIPA will examine such trademark application; obviously they are bad faith applications.
No matter what, we still devise our trademark protection strategy in advance especially in the first-to-file countries. By filing the trademark applications in advance, we will then be able to:
1. Prevent third parties from preemptively registering our own trademarks;
2. Avoid spending a lot of time and money on cracking down the preemptively registered trademarks by third parties;
3. Legally use the trademark over the registered goods or services after obtaining the trademark registration;
4. Hinder the later registration of trademarks that are identical and similar to our trademarks;
5. Plan market activities at good time.
The advantages of early layout of trademark registration are obvious. When we want to carry out market activities in a country/region, we should apply for trademarks as early as possible.
