Supreme People’s Court gives clear legal prescription for trademark squatting

Reining in bad-faith trademark filing, or trademark squatting, is one of the stand-out features of the third revision of the Trademark Law that took effect 1 May 2014. In the year since the law took effect, there has been a definite degree of containment of trademark squatting.

However, the applicability of certain provisions of the new law is still to be clarified by judicial interpretation or other such official documents. There remains sharp contrast in how courts rule in practice on issues such as squatting on a large number of trademarks or filing marks with the names of well-known public personalities, fictional characters and works of art.

The SPC circulated for comment a draft of the Regulations on Several Issues in Hearing Administrative Cases Involving Trademark Authorization in 2014. The draft regulations set out explicit provisions on the application of the law in trademark squatting cases. While these regulations have not yet been finalized or implemented, practitioners generally believe that they will have considerable significance in further curbing trademark squatting.

Wang Yadong is the executive partner and Lu Lei is a partner of Run Ming Law Office.