Clients sometimes come to our China lawyers with an apparent conundrum. They have found a Chinese distributor for their product, and both sides are ready to begin selling products in China right away. As in, tomorrow. So far so good. But our client sells a branded product, and they haven’t registered their brand as a trademark in China. Not so good.
The client knows (perhaps from reading this blog) that the only realistic way to get trademark rights in China is by registering them, because China is a first-to-file country.
And then they learn that it usually takes 12-18 months to register a trademark in China. At this point they become concerned about the nontrivial period when their distributor will be selling their branded product in China without any sort of trademark protection.
They should be concerned. But not too concerned, as long as they file their China trademark application right away and enter into a written agreement with their Chinese distributor. The distribution agreement should contain provisions stating that the trademark belongs to the client and the distributor may use the mark in China, but will not file any competing applications, oppositions, or invalidations.
The distribution agreement should also include appropriate contractual language protecting the IP more generally. And if you want this agreement to work to protect your trademark in China, it is much better for it to be in Chinese.
A distribution agreement with the above provisions (along with countless others, of course) will sufficiently protect your IP as against your China distributor. The remaining concern, which cannot be addressed in a distribution agreement, is infringement by a third party while the trademark application is pending.
Without a valid registration in China, there usually isn’t much you can do to stop a third party from using “your” mark. But any legitimate Chinese company is going to shy away from a strategy that only gives them 12 months to establish and profit from a brand name, after which it must stop using it or risk paying damages. That leaves the counterfeiters, for whom 12 months is more than enough time to make a profit, but who aren’t going to be interested until a brand has developed enough name recognition to be worth ripping off. Still, yet another reason to file a trademark application now. Because the distributor is going to be the one who really bears the brunt of any infringement in China. Sophisticated Chinese distributors know this and so we often have situations where American or European companies come to us after having been instructed by their potential or actual distributors to file their trademarks in China.
One final note: many foreign companies do not create a Chinese brand name before selling their product in China, only to discover that a name has been created for them and registered as a trademark – often by their Chinese distributor. If you haven’t already come up with a Chinese name for your product, do so now, and also make sure your distribution agreement requires the distributor to assign to you any Chinese-language marks that relate to your product that it has already registered.
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