The social networking site Facebook, recently started registering trademarks related to the name “Facebook” in the highly populated country, China. The social networking giant hired a local company in China and working seriously on trademarks, but lost the trademark for the Chinese translation of “Facebook”. Although a local company already monopolized the Chinese translation of Facebook the company is working hard on getting trademarks for all Facebook variants and may be for Facebook itself.
You might have heard that the Apple Inc., now encountering a serious trouble in China, facing a lawsuit regarding iPad trademark. Apple claims that “it acquired the iPad trademark in 2009 but the Chinese company Proview is not respecting their agreement”, with some legitimate documents. The Apple’s story getting bigger each day with a new lawsuit idea from Proview. Whatever, at the end of the day, Proview needs a huge amount of money is the real fact.
That is what happening lately in China. These days, many of local companies in China were investing in trademarks. Yes, exactly that is what they are doing and could be a serious threat to intellectual property in China. A single report from China Daily mentioning that “at least 39 Chinese companies and individuals have attempted to register the names iPhone or iPad as trademarks for products as varied as hiking shoes, veterinary drugs and diapers.” shows us the insanity in obtaining the intellectual property and conflicting interests in China.
They were doing it in a hope of one day selling their trademarks to foreign companies, once they enter the China market. This is what happened in Apple’s case. We could see how these people’s slowly dragging their whole nation towards the trademark extortion. When you see the picture of iPad that Proview manufactured (below image) and it makes me laugh like hell when they said, it is what for they registered the iPad trademark. Not even close? sure, they don’t.
Facebook, whose service was currently not available in China, reportedly holding the rights for 61 registered trademarks (covering either English or Chinese translation). Also, I believe that the social networking giant would surely won’t choose to miss adding a huge population (1,338,299,500 in 2010) into its network. That was a lot of revenue to lose, if they planned to skip China. Actually they were not going to. A recent effort from Facebook in China, investigating and collecting evidences on registered trademarks on the country that were similar to Facebook shows us the social network’s interest towards China.
According to SCTV, Facebook hired an intellectual property consulting firm EastIP to deal with the Facebook trademark issues in China. Already, EastIP found a lot of Facebook trademark variants in China in both English and Chinese. So, it seems like a lot of effort were putting in on trademarks in China by the Facebook and it shows us, the socail network doesn’t want to get sued in future, particularly after watching the Apple case. Whatever, it’s the time to start rumors (develop stories) on Facebook entering China.
