China and Korea are important trade partners. Many Korean companies have long entered or purchased goods from Chinese market.In this process, their brands have also come into the sight of trademark squatters.
One of Mingdun’s client, ICONIX,a reputable Korean brand has its trademark squattered in China by its Chinese vendor in 32 categories of 'beer, beverages, etc.'. However, sincetheydid not work with each other directly but through many intermediaries, the evidence was of low probative value and the client’s previous actions against the squattered trademark were lost in CNIPA and Beijing IP Court. Our client and our lawyers did not get discouraged easily and our lawyers kept working hard to instruct our client to collect new evidencein various aspects. Meanwhile, our lawyers worked on bad faith evidence heavily because the bad faith has been considered more since the trademark law revision in April 2019,which will take effect on Nov.1, 2019. The hard working pays back in the Beijing High People’s Court to get a favorable decision for our client.
ICONIX, founded in 2001, is a large-scale entertainment company well-known in Korea and the world. It has many animation products, and one of its most core and most famous cartoon characters is the little penguin Pororo, with the Korean name '뽀로로'. Pororo (뽀로로) is a national treasure cartoon character in Korean. Based on the popularity of the character, Little Penguin Pororo '
' has many derivatives, such as toys, food, supplies, applications, regular exhibitions, movies, amusement parks and musicals.
Mingdun is a full-service law firm that focuses on intellectual property and also provides services such as labor law, company law and perennial legal counsel to meet the diversified needs of our clients.
Trademark is one of the core business areas of Mingdun and the trademark team is led by senior lawyers with more than 15 years of experience. For many years, it has been paying attention to the development and changes of China's trademark laws and regulations and administrative/judicial practices, and has accumulated rich experience through a large number of practical cases. All of these not only enables Mingdun to provide one-stop comprehensive trademark legal services to our clients, but also makes us a long-term partner of many multinational companies and small and medium-sized enterprises.