We’ve blogged about legal translation and professional Chinese-English and English-Chinese translation services in the context of digital piracy and China’s antitrust review process. With many companies turning to the Chinese market as an area of growth, protecting one’s trademark becomes an issue. Although China has become a member of the World Trade Organization, it has failed to increase its regulations of intellectual property rights. In fact, in 2007 the US filed a complaint with the WTO regarding China’s poor enforcement of copyright and trademark protection.
If your company discovers that a Chinese company has applied for a trademark that may infringe upon your trademark rights, one can file an opposition within three months from the date of publication of the trademark application. Along with the opposition, one must file evidence in support of its opposition with the China Trademark Office. If no opposition is filed within the specified period, the trademark will be registered. Upon receipt of the opposition, the China Trademark Office will hear both the opponent and the applicant on facts, and following an investigation and verification will make a decision.
As this entire process involves the Chinese legal system, it is imperative to have foreign language translations not only of the Chinese forms and Chinese law translations, but also translations of all the registration papers located within other jurisdictions.
Contact our professional Chinese-English and English-Chinese translation services firm when faced with translating Mandarin, Cantonese, Chinese litigation documents; legal, technical, medical papers, or financial documents from English to Chinese, and from Chinese to English.