Different Judicial Opinions from Cases on Name Trademarks and Domain Name Conflicts in China

By Albert Chen

In the first half of this year, our website posted an essay discussing the domain name dispute heard in the Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court (“Shanghai Court”) concerning the renowned comedian Zhou Libo. Recently, the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court (“Beijing Court”) decided a very similar case. Yet there were very different standards used to decide the different cases in Beijing and Shanghai. The most critical point is the determination of whether, after receiving the invitation to buy the domain name, the rights holder had bad faith during registration and use of the domain name.

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Analysis on Common Legal Risk of Chinese Company’s Ads

By You Yunting

The competition in Chinese market is so fierce that the company would strive to make their ads be more outstanding, yet that could also bring them the risks of administrative punishment. In today’s essay, you will see our analysis on the common risk for corporate propaganda.

I. No fulfilling to the promise in propaganda

The most typical case shall be the ads from Beijing Hyundai (note: the link is in Chinese), the joint venture of Hyundai in China. As claimed in the its ads, the chief of the company promised not to reduce the sales price of its vehicle in the coming 2 years, which soon be overthrown by its price adjustment within 120 days after that with the pressure from market competition. On that, we saw the consumer filing a group lawsuit against its break-in of promise. Despite as investigated by the company that, the words of the chief is not quit the same as claimed in the media report, and Hyundai was therefore judged of no liability, the Korean brand faced a devaluing of social reputation in China. In our opinions, the losses of intangible asset of the car maker are much more than the claimed compensation. And that shall mainly lie with the over promise by the company.

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