Stipulations
"The application for registration and the use of a trademark shall be made in good faith" was written into an amendment to the trademark law, which took effect in May 2014.
The amendment also stipulated that attempts to register a trademark would not be approved if the name infringes on a prior right or is regarded as a malicious application of an unregistered trademark that has been used by another entity.
"The amended law can be seen as a turning point in trademark protection in China, after which there has been a discernible shift towards greater protection for brand owners", said Edward Chatterton, a Hong Kong-based partner at the international law firm, DLA Piper.
Trademark approval offices and the courts have been more willing to rule on grounds of bad faith in cases of trademark piracy and invalidate maliciously registered trademarks, Chatterton said.
A guidebook issued by the Beijing High People's Court in January 2014 makes it clear that copyright is one of the prior rights mentioned in the amendment to the law.
Song Xiaoming, head of the civil division of the Supreme People's Court, said the name of a work of art and characters associated with it are not usually protected by Chinese copyright law.
However, works and characters that have attained a certain level of popularity carry a significant commercial value, which generates a legal right that should be protected, he said.
The regulation declared protection of the title of a work and the characters in it as trademarks, which demonstrates the top court's stance in encouraging honesty and integrity in business operations, he added.
Meanwhile, the Supreme People's Court has urged all courts to avoid overprotection of titles and characters, and protection should not be extended to those regarded as being fully in the public domain.
In 2015, more than 24,000 trademark cases were filed in courts across the country in 2015, a rise of 13 percent from the previous year, according to the latest annual report on the protection of intellectual property rights, published by the State Intellectual Property Office.
