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Notable Trademark News Report Dec 2020
Recently, Taiwan news has been reporting heavily on the headlines about the trademark of "Haidilao" being squatted by "Hedilao" and the main content of the reports is as follows. In August this year, a Hunan cuisine restaurant in Changsha, China, was sued for trademark infringement by the famous hotpot chain "Haidilao" because their signboard contains the word "Hedilao". The court of Changsha held that Hedilao serves Hunan cuisine whereas Haidilao serves hotpot. The cuisine served by the two restaurants are clearly different, therefore Haidilao’s trademark infringement lawsuit was dismissed. The verdict enraged Haidilao, which offers novel services such as noodle pulling and the face-changing Sichuan opera along with their food. In order to prevent the recurrence of the infringement scenario, the company has filed numerous trademark registration applications within one day, which included a large number of different names with homonyms.
It can be seen from the China Trademark website that after losing of the infringement lawsuit against Hedilao, Haidilao made a big move to apply for 177 trademark registrations within one day to defend its own brand and prevent future copycat companies from taking advantage of them. From this piece of news, we can see that intellectual property rights are so important to oneself that we would rather “make a shot in the dark” than to give others the chance to gain popularity through squatting.
“Haidilao” filing applications to register a large number of trademarks that may be associated with “Haidilao” was indeed a part of its strategies to protect its own trademark. However, there are still other ways to protect the trademark rights of "Haidilao". Of course, you can apply for a large number of trademarks like "Haidilao" to monopolize similar names, but there are also other strategies that could help you save money and help your business.
For established brands, even if there are corresponding procedures to regain trademark rights or to prevent others from hanging onto the brand’s popularity, there are still cases, like the "Haidilao" case, that get dismissed. From this, it can be seen that the trademark placement strategy is the core issue of a trademark application.
If you think your trademark may require relevant assistance, you should seek assistance from a professional agent. We can provide you with more intellectual property protection solutions by targeting your needs. This will save you the hassle and you will not require to spend a lot of money like what you see in the news, where the actual results are not as good as expected.