Sad! Nearly 60 Amazon women's clothing trademarks were maliciously registered, and some sellers have been banned...

Recently, an Amazon seller revealed that when he was registering a Canadian trademark, he suddenly found that someone had already registered it in September. Moreover, this wave of trademark preemption affected a wide range of areas, and a large number of Amazon women's clothing trademarks were collectively registered!

According to the pictures provided by the sellers, nearly 60 trademarks were affected! After hearing this news, Amazon sellers collapsed. Familiar tricks will be played again!

According to Nexip, an intellectual property service provider, trademark preemptive registration is common both in the domestic and overseas markets. Especially as Chinese companies are increasingly going global, there will inevitably be more and more cases of overseas trademark preemptive registration in the future.

#Generally, "black agencies" will target the following types of sellers:

1. Sellers who are already well-known in China: These sellers are relatively strong and are more likely to expand into overseas markets, which makes them more likely to attract the attention of preemptive registrants.

For example, 17 well-known clothing brands in Quanzhou, such as "Jiumuwang", "Jinba", "Laorencheng", etc., were registered by a Macau resident in Macau;

2. Sellers in export-oriented industrial clusters: Individual sellers in these areas may not be well-known, but because there are specific industrial clusters in the region, producing similar products and even exporting to the same market, they are likely to attract the attention of preemptive registrants.

For example, in 2017, many toy brand trademarks and factory names in Chenghai District, Shantou, Guangdong (China's "World Toy Capital") were simultaneously registered by a foreign businessman in Chile;

3. Competitors that are “black organizations”: These black organizations use trademark registration as a powerful means of competition to suppress and restrict competitors.

For example, Hisense's "HiSense" trademark was registered by Siemens in Germany, and Siemens demanded a transfer fee of 50 million euros;

4. Upstream wholesalers or partners who are “black organizations”: These black organizations use trademark registration as a bargaining chip to threaten upstream partners in order to obtain better returns in business cooperation.

For example, the trademark of Hubei Yuli Company was registered by its distributor in Indonesia, who intended to set up a new business in Indonesia based on the trademark and exclude Hubei Yuli Company from the Indonesian market.

Of course, these sellers targeted by "black organizations" all have one thing in common, that is: they have already been sold (especially in overseas markets), but their trademarks have not yet been registered in major countries.

#The actions that "black organizations" usually take are:

1. Actively contact sellers and ask for high trademark transfer fees or licensing fees;

2. Harassing the normal business operations of sellers. They will complain to e-commerce platforms, or complain or sue to customs/market regulatory authorities/courts, forcing sellers to sign a "capitulation agreement", demanding high settlement fees, or seeking high compensation awarded by the authorities. When the sellers' products with the preemptively registered trademarks gain a certain sales volume and popularity, the black organizations will start to act. At this time, because the preemptively registered trademarks have great reputation and interests, sellers often find it difficult to give up and are more likely to succumb to the demands of the black organizations and "spend money to avoid disaster";

3. Sell or license the trademark to the seller's competitors to obtain a considerable transfer fee or license fee. In fact, there are also a large number of counterfeit manufacturers active in the overseas market. The preemptively registered trademarks often become a profit-making tool for counterfeit manufacturers;

4. Using the preemptively registered trademarks to produce/sell counterfeit products, piggybacking on the goodwill of legitimate sellers, snatching their market share, and seeking unfair competition benefits.

For sellers, it is often difficult to express the pain of having their trademark preemptively registered. If they continue to use the preemptively registered trademark, they will face lawsuits for trademark infringement, which will lead to listing closures, inventory backlogs, and even possible lawsuits and high compensation. If they give up the preemptively registered trademark, it means that the seller will give up the market of the destination country.

How should sellers deal with malicious trademark preemptive registration?

Nexip said: "Once you find that your trademark has been maliciously registered, the sooner you deal with it, the better. Sellers must not avoid it. Because trademark registration is likely to be just the first step of the "black organization", and there may be more black hands behind it. Only by getting rid of the "black organization"'s registered trademarks at the beginning can you cut off its subsequent black hands in time and avoid greater losses." At the same time, it is recommended that sellers do two things:

Immediately file your own trademark application in the country where the trademark was preempted;

Collect evidence of prior use of your own trademark as soon as possible, and then file "clearance" actions such as objection, invalidation and cancellation against the trademark that has been preemptively registered.

Industry insiders pointed out that you can wait until the trademark is published to file an objection, but the government fee alone is 750 Canadian dollars for one objection, and the publication is estimated to take one and a half to two years. If you don't want to wait that long, you can consult a lawyer in China to see if you can sue the company in China.

(Source: Cross-border Black Technology)

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