A Trademark Infringement Dispute Caused by Recycled Budweiser Bottles

(By You Yunting)To save costs, Chinese beer manufacturers have been using recycled bottle to refill beer, and while most large-scale beer manufacturers will engrave their trademarks into their glass bottles, as well as recycle their own bottles. However, for small-scale beer manufacturers, such practices are impractical, and when small beer manufacturers use other larger manufacturer’s bottles with their trademarks, all the ingredients for trademark infringement are present. In today’s post, we will introduce to you two cases heard by two different courts concerning the same issue. 

READ MORE

Does BesTV Infringe CNTV for Broadcasting Olympic Games?

By You Yunting

In recent, CNTV, the subsidiary of China national television station (the “CCTV”), which in charge of its online business, quarreled with SMG’s BesTV (SHEX:600637) on the Olympics broadcasting. By the statement of CNTV, it owns the exclusive online broadcasting right of 2012 London Olympics in China, yet BesTV, with no license form CNTV, provided 1) the streaming of Olympic games, 2) program time-shifted playback through server storage and 3) VOD to local cooperated IPTVs, and that damages CNTV’s legal rights. So far we have heard no reply from BesTV on the accusation.

READ MORE

Does Combination of Youku and Tudou breach China Anti-monopoly law?

Reportedly(the report is in Chinese), the two Chinese leading video websites, Youku.com Inc. (NYESE: YOUKU) (“Youku”) and Tudou Holdings Ltd. (NASDAQ: TUDOU) (“Tudou”) jointly announced today that on 11th March, 2012, they have signed a definitive agreement for the combination of Tudou and Youku in a 100% stock for stock transaction, which has been approved by each party’s board of director but still waiting for the shareholders’ approval, and is planned to be completed in the third quarter of 2012.I think, it shall be noted that some anti-monopoly issues may be arisen from the combination of the two Chinese biggest video websites, which possibly resulting adverse impacts on the rights and interests of consumers and fair competition.

READ MORE