by King & Wood Mallesons’ Trademark Group
Currently there is a problem where the worldwide Trademark Clearing House cannot extend its service to Chinese users. On 16th June, for the sake of solving the above problem, the China Organizational Name Administration Center released a system, which provides preventive protection to Chinese domain names and trademarks. This localizes the services of trademark clearing house, as well as enhances the legal protection offered to Chinese trademark owners on the worldwide platform of the Internet.
To settle the increasingly severe trademark squatting and infringement, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) developed the Trademark Clearing House. Such system protects domain names for Western countries which use English as their first language. However, it fails to provide inquiry services in both traditional and simplified Chinese language at the same time during the verification process and therefore, fails to protect the rights and interests of domain names using Chinese language on the Internet. In response to the Chinese Government’s requests, in April, the ICANN agreed to authorize the China Organizational Name Administration Center to build the world’s second Trademark Clearing House during its 46th ICANN meeting in Beijing.
As the world’s only organization that provides protection to the rights and interests of trademarks using simplified and traditional Chinese on the Internet, the center aims at providing priority domain registration, trademark declaration and services similar to trademark reminders. It has become the only organization that provides Chinese trademark verification and services. The Chinese Trademark Clearing House was officially launched on 10th June.
For more information about the above issue, please refer to:
http://www.chinaipmagazine.com/news-show.asp?id=8872
http://www.chinagov.cn/xwzx/zxdt/201306/t20130617_226322.html