Dior claims victory in China’s highest court
China’s Supreme People’s Court has overturned rulings by lower courts and handed a trademark win to French fashion house Christian Dior.
After a two-hour public hearing yesterday, April 26 (which, coincidentally, was World IP Day), China’s highest court revoked the original rulings made by local courts in Beijing and ordered another review of Dior’s application.
The lower court had rejected Dior’s application to register the water droplet-shaped bottle of J’adore, a popular perfume, as a trademark.
In July 2015, Dior’s application to the China Trademark Office (CTMO) was rejected. The CTMO determined that the bottle’s shape and design didn’t “meet the standards of a trademark”, said a press release from the Supreme Court.
Dior filed an appeal against the decision at the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board but failed in its attempt to overturn the ruling.
The fashion house brought the board to court in 2016 and then appealed in 2017, but both verdicts in the first hearing and appeal hearing ruled in favour of the board.
Sun Mingjuan, the board’s lawyer, argued that the perfume bottle should be regarded as a common container for liquors, and that it has “no obvious specificity”.
Dior claimed that the bottle was “special enough” and filed an appeal at the Supreme Court, stating that it had received an international registration for the bottle from the World Intellectual Property Organization.
Cui Guobin, an IP associate professor with Tsinghua University, said after attending the hearing: “The latest verdict is significant—it shows our country’s equal protection of IP rights.”
The decision comes amid criticism of China’s IP regime by the US, which has threatened to impose tariffs of billions of dollars on China, in response to the country’s alleged IP violations.
Earlier in April, WIPR reported that China’s State Intellectual Property Office announced that the country will soon introduce punitive damages for IP infringements in an effort to ensure that offenders pay a “big price”.
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