Thank you Bhavini Mistry again for your research and contribution to this article.
When protecting your brands around the world you need to pay attention to variations on how they are written and spelled not only on other languages but also different writing systems. That is specially important outside the west, such as Asian writing systems.
Franck Muller is a world-famous Swiss watch-making brand. Earlier in 2017, Franck Muller filed a lawsuit against a Japanese trademark with a similar name accusing them of copying its brand. Its accusations are based on the fact that the Japanese trademark has a name mimicking his brand in Japanese characters called “Franck Miura”. Japanese use Japanese characters to mimic sounds or words depending on the phonetic sounds they create. To make things worse, the Japanese system can use up to four different character sets. One is the western set, two are phonetic characters used by the Japanese. The last is an adoption of Chinese characters with either old Chinese pronunciation or Japanese pronunciation. Chinese characters each have their own meaning and value based on these sounds. Although the names are similar in sound and the meaning is close, they are not the same. In addition, these parody watches are selling at a cheap price compared to Muller’s watches which are priced in the thousands. The Japanese court ruled this past March that the appearance and brand of these parody watches are different from Muller’s and therefore, there is no confusion between the two brands.
A Chinese court decided in a different direction with regards to Nike and the Jordan brand. Michael Jordan registered his name in China long time ago. The problem is that he registered the English version in western characters only. It happens that one version of Jordan, is 乔丹 pronounced “Qiaodan” in Mandarin. A company in China registered the Qiaodan name in addition to a man playing basketball logo. It took some years for Mr. Jordan to realize this, and by then the Chinese company had developed a juicy business benefiting from the phonetic and visual association. After several setbacks, in 2017 finally Jordan and Nike were able to get a high court to reverse the previous decisions that favored the pirate company and were able to secure the brand in Chinese characters.
It took Nike and Michael over ten years to have justice in China. Avoid these headaches by planning ahead before your brand becomes a global phenomenon like Michael Jordan.
When protecting your brands around the world you need to pay attention to variations on how they are written and spelled not only on other languages but also different writing systems. That is specially important outside the west, such as Asian writing systems.
Franck Muller is a world-famous Swiss watch-making brand. Earlier in 2017, Franck Muller filed a lawsuit against a Japanese trademark with a similar name accusing them of copying its brand. Its accusations are based on the fact that the Japanese trademark has a name mimicking his brand in Japanese characters called “Franck Miura”. Japanese use Japanese characters to mimic sounds or words depending on the phonetic sounds they create. To make things worse, the Japanese system can use up to four different character sets. One is the western set, two are phonetic characters used by the Japanese. The last is an adoption of Chinese characters with either old Chinese pronunciation or Japanese pronunciation. Chinese characters each have their own meaning and value based on these sounds. Although the names are similar in sound and the meaning is close, they are not the same. In addition, these parody watches are selling at a cheap price compared to Muller’s watches which are priced in the thousands. The Japanese court ruled this past March that the appearance and brand of these parody watches are different from Muller’s and therefore, there is no confusion between the two brands.
A Chinese court decided in a different direction with regards to Nike and the Jordan brand. Michael Jordan registered his name in China long time ago. The problem is that he registered the English version in western characters only. It happens that one version of Jordan, is 乔丹 pronounced “Qiaodan” in Mandarin. A company in China registered the Qiaodan name in addition to a man playing basketball logo. It took some years for Mr. Jordan to realize this, and by then the Chinese company had developed a juicy business benefiting from the phonetic and visual association. After several setbacks, in 2017 finally Jordan and Nike were able to get a high court to reverse the previous decisions that favored the pirate company and were able to secure the brand in Chinese characters.
It took Nike and Michael over ten years to have justice in China. Avoid these headaches by planning ahead before your brand becomes a global phenomenon like Michael Jordan.