An increasing number of African companies do business in the Far
East, and many of them register their trade marks in the
region's major markets. So, it's interesting to look at
trade mark developments in the major markets from time-to-time. In
this article, we look at some recent decisions in China, India and
Japan.
China
China is probably the major market for most African companies
and we have discussed Chinese trade mark issues in a number of our
articles. We've
looked at how Chinese trade mark law has changed over the years
and, particularly, how the harshness of the "first to
file" system – a system that made it all too easy for
Chinese companies to hijack valuable foreign brands – was
mitigated by changes to the law that introduced a good faith
requirement. As a result, registrations obtained by local companies
could be challenged, and attorneys could even be called to account.
We also
discussed how the introduction of a multi-class trade mark
filing
