January. 2007

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Mr. Hai Yang, the President of Steele was appointed as the successive member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Chaoyang District Committee of Beijing.

2007 WAD Semi-annual Conference is going to be open on April 12 to April 24, 2007 in San Diego , CA , U.S.

As the scholarship sponsor of Peking University Law School , Steele was invited to attend 2007 New Year Appreciation Dinner of Peking University Law School in China Grand Hotel on December 15, 2006.

Sino-US Seminar of Intellectual Property Law & Practice was held in Shanghai . The seminar was sponsored by Shanghai Intellectual Property Administration and undertaken by US Finnegan & Henderson Law Firm and Shanghai Watson & Band Law Offices. Over 80 representatives from the government, enterprises and agents attended the seminar and Zhixing Chen, the director of Shanghai Intellectual Property Administration gave an address.

On December 1, 2006, National Development and Reform Commission, P.R.C. announced Administrative Measure of Legal Service Charge, which would be officially implemented since December 1, 2006. The Measures strictly regulated the charge procedures of legal service and indicated that the maximum proportion of charges for risk representation shall not exceed 30 percent of the amount of the principal contract. The risk representation is forbidden in criminal cases, administrative cases, national compensation cases, mass cases and civil cases involved citizens’ marriage and succession, etc., which were closely related to citizens’ benefits. Law firms only can collect the legal service charge, the payment on behalf of the consigners and the expenses for business trips.

On December 11, 2006, State Information Center announced that it officially started up Electronic Data Judicial Identification Service. In combination with its predominance of data recovery technique and abundant experience, the Electronic Data Judicial Identification Center of State Information Center will improve the reliability and authenticity of electronic evidences as well as ensure their integrity, further to provide judicial administrations with authentic, reliable and objective result of electronic data identification.

How to protect well-known trademarks?

Well-known trademarks feature in high reputation in public and their owners are always large-scale enterprises. Therefore, the protection of well-known trademarks differ from those of general trademarks and the protection ranges an extensive scope.  Nevertheless, based on the actuality, there is diversified protection scope and extent for respective trademark. Generally speaking, the expansive protection for the well-known trademarks is mainly represented in following aspects:

China is the member country of Paris Convention for The Protection of Industrial Property. China protects trademarks, which are not registered in China by other member countries stated in the above convention while approbated as the well-known trademarks by the trademark office in China . It means that the application of copied trademarks and trademark rush-registration will be rejected. The unauthorized use of the well-known trademarks is prohibited.

The original well-known trademarks should be protected in multi product categories. Take “Tong Ren Tang”, the original well-known trademark of medicines for instance. If the company who is not the owner of it, its application for the registration of the well-known trademark “Tong Ren Tang” used for health food or drinks will be rejected. The local Administration for Industry and Commerce will interdict the use of “Tong Ren Tang” without any authorization, and the penalty will be enforced in the severe cases. It is noted that although “Tong Ren Tang” is not registered for health foods or drinks, the protection mentioned above can be implemented, which is one of the alleged “expansive protections”.

Since the well-known trademarks are approved by the trademark office, if other companies use the same words or similar words as part of their enterprise names so that may arouse misdirection, the local Administration for Industry and Commerce will not approve their registration. The owners of the well-known trademarks, which have been registered by others, can apply to the Administration for Industry and Commerce to revoke others’ registration in two years since the owners know the registration.

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