Lately, Janlea’s lawyers, i.e. Mr. Andy Xu and Ms. Jiang Shan, as the authorized agent of Lee Kum Kee Co., Ltd, won the final judgment of administrative lawsuit on review of opposition against the trademark “LI JIN JI in Chinese.”

In order to revoke the TRAB’s decision and judgment in the first trial, the appellant (former defendant in the first trial), Shenzhen Li Jin Ji Food Co., Ltd, lodged an appeal to Beijing High People's Court with the grounds that since there are evident differences between the appellant’s trademark“李金记” under reg. No. 3676671 and the cited trademark“李锦记LEE KUM KEE” under reg. No. 871102 in aspects of visual effect and pronunciation, etc, trademarks of both parties do not constitute similar marks, that as the opposed trademark is the extended registration of the appellant’s trademark “李金记” under reg. No. 303559 and that evidences submitted by the appellant can verify that co-existence of its trademark “LI JIN JI in Chinese” and the third party’s trademark will not cause confusions and misidentifications among the public.

After 2 hearings conducted by Beijing No.1 Intermediate People’s Court and Beijing High People's Court, the final judgment ascertained that with only one different word, basically identical pronunciations and small difference in aspect of appearance, the simultaneous use of the opposed trademark “李金記”and the cited trademark and the cited trademark “李錦記” on seasonings such as soya sauce is liable to enable the relevant public to take it for granted that suppliers of goods bearing trademarks of both parties are correlated in some manner. Besides, evidences submitted can not prove that the opposed trademark, through uses, has brought about an objective situation that it is distinguishable from the cited trademark and thus a stable market order has been formed. Besides, although the registration date of the trademark under reg. No. 303559 is earlier than that of the cited trademark, Shenzhen Li Jin Ji Food Co., Ltd did not submit any evidence verifying that the said trademark, before the filing date of the cited trademark, had been used and thus obtained certain publicity. Hence, the time when the said trademark was assigned to Shenzhen Li Jin Ji Food Co., Ltd is also posterior to the time when the application for registration of the cited trademark was approved. Therefore, Shenzhen Li Jin Ji Food Co., Ltd’s appeal was refused as it is devoid of factual and legal basis.