[Foundation-l] Wiki trademark issue for ZH Wikipedia in mainland China

Sun Apr 23 22:26:16 UTC 2006

I'll get in touch with a chinese law firm through our japanese law firm.

Best,

Jean-Baptiste Soufron
wikimedia foundation
chief legal officer

Le 23 avr. 06 à 19:47, Andre Engels a écrit :

> 2006/4/23, THD <theodoranian at gmail.com>:
>> Hi,
>> There are some things different between Chinese characters and  
>> English word.
>> Every Chinese character has its own meaning. When we translate a  
>> foriegn
>> language into Chinese, sometimes we do it by meaning, but more  
>> often we use
>> characters with similar pronunciation for translation. Wiki is a  
>> generic
>> name, so it can't be a trade mark. In Chinese sphere, wiki can be  
>> translate
>> in many ways. Such as 維基 (now all the Wikimedia projects in  
>> Chinese
>> language, the first one pronunces as "wei", and the second  
>> pronunces as
>> "gee"), 圍紀(first "wei", second "gee"), and 維客(first "wei" ,  
>> second "ke")etc.
>> 維基 is one of translations of the word "wiki", and it was chosen  
>> by Chinese
>> Wikipedians to be the only name of Chinese Wikipedia. Before Chinese
>> Wikipedian's choosing 維基 as the name, there was no famous name  
>> of wiki
>> technology. The problem is "if we don't register 維基, the  
>> Chinese Wikipedia
>> will face the challenge of changing its name (in Chinese)".  
>> Wikipedia is one
>> word, but 維基百科 have 4 characters.  In Chinese text trade  
>> mark, the
>> government protect the usage of charater singly.When someone  
>> registers 維基,
>> other people can't use 維基 in their own trade mark. So the  
>> situation is not
>> the same.
>> THD
>
> I am not into Chinese trademark law, but in general is it not a
> defense against a claim of trademark violation that one used the
> trademark continuously since BEFORE the person claiming violation used
> it? I know that this is the case here in the Netherlands, there is
> even the rule that if that other person knew about your previous use
> of the trademark, their registration is considered mala fide, and can
> be cancelled on those grounds.
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
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