Lawyer Zhang Hong and lawyer Xu Jin represented Cantou Yalian Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. in its trademark dispute administrative litigation against the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board, and a third party, a company in Guangdong. The case was concluded at Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court and the claim of our client, Cantou Yalian Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd received support from the Court. The Court repealed the dispute adjudication made by the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board on this case, according the laws.

The key issue of dispute was whether or not the “Xizhilang” trademark of the company in Guangdong constituted a Well-Known Trademark before the application and registration of “Xizhilang” trademark on type 3 products including “shampoos” by Yalian Pharmaceutical on December 19th 1996.

Beijing No.1 Intermediate Court ruled as follows after the trial: The approval of Well-Known Trademark should be considered as confirmation of related truths. However, since the objective truths could not match the legal truths exactly, the degree that legal truths capture the objective truths would be decided by the evidence supply of the involved parties. Therefore, the approval of Well-Known Trademarks in specific cases, not only depended on if, objectively speaking, the trademark reached a high degree of reputation in Mainland China, but also relied crucially on if the right owner of the trademark submitted sufficient evidence to prove such fact. In this case, the evidence provided by the company in Guangdong neither clearly pointed to the cited trademark, nor was able to prove that, before the application of the trademark in dispute, the company had conducted a large amount of advertising and application as marketing actions for the cited trademark. In addition, certain content in the evidence provided by the company contradicted with the content in the related evidence provided by Yalian Pharmaceutical, which indicated the possibility of forgery. Considering the weakness of the proof for popularity provided by the company in Guangdong, the Court could not confirmed that, before the application date of the trademark in dispute, the cited trademark reached a high degree of reputation in Mainland China. Hence, the Court held that the current evidence provided by the company in Guangdong could not prove that the cited trademark had constituted a Well-Known Trademark. Therefore, Trademark Review and Adjudication Board’s adjudication on this case lacked essential evidence, and the defendant’s conclusion that the trademark in dispute violated article 13 paragraph 2 of the Trademark Law lacked proof. The adjudication was repealed under the laws.

The case was an important model example because it was one of the few cases in which approval of a Well-Known Trademark is repealed through judiciary procedures. In this case, the Court gave a clear requirement of evidence for the approval of Well-Known Trademark in specific cases, which was that “the degree that legal truths [pertaining to the Well-Known Trademark] capture the objective truths would be decided by the evidence supply of the involved parties and therefore, the approval of Well-Known Trademarks in specific cases, not only depended on if, objectively speaking, the trademark reached a high degree of reputation in Mainland China, but also relied crucially on if the right owner of the trademark submitted sufficient evidence to prove such truth.” The legal team of Janlea, having been commissioned by the involved party, analyzed the case thoroughly, formulated a complete system of litigation strategies and plans, and collected a large number of effective evidence, demonstrating particularly the ability of our firm to handle difficult and complex cases.