Recently, Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People’s Court heard an appeal brought by a Chinese firm, FirstTrust China Ltd. (hereafter called FirstTrust) that was found guilty of trademark infringement in the first instance.
It is learnt that, in November, 2008, the Pudong New Area People's Court found that FirstTrust China Ltd infringed the trademark of Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (hereinafter called Charles Schwab), a financial service company based in the United States. Charles Schwab is the owner of a series trademark such as “JIAXIN (in Chinese character)”, “JIAXINLICAI (in Chinese character)”, “Charles Schwab”. They alleged in the first instance court that FirstTrust registered JIAXIN as its trade name and use the mark in it advertising materials. Both FirstTrust and Charles Schwab are engaged in the financial services and the use of JIAXIN would mislead customers. The first instance court ruled that FirstTrust had purposely used the name to take advantage of Charles Schwab's reputation. Therefore, FirstTrust was ordered to change its name and pay 150,000 RMB in compensation.
At the appeal, FirstTrust argued that its Chinese name was simply a translation and claimed that it was a coincidence that its Chinese name was the same as that of Charles Schwab. Now, the decision is to be made later.
