Wednesday May 20th 2009, by Piers Strickland
Having attended an INTA Seattle talk given by Vivien Chan & Co talk on trade mark protection in China, I was interested to learn that companies who wish to enter China (or those that are already there) need to take particular care in assessing how their product will be pronounced in Chinese (presumably Mandarin).
For example, Pfizer Viagra realized that the common Chinese name was for Viagra was “Mighty Brother”. Pfizer’s delay in applying to register the Mighty Brother mark led to a third party registering the mark before Pfizer was ready, creating significant problems for Pfizer.
China operates a first to file system, so it seems highly sensible to make a Chinese application as soon as you are able.
Of course, language difficulties are not confined, recent EU cases have also highlighted the difficulty in different marks having dissimilar meanings due to language issues.
