A few days ago, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court pronounced a judgment on the first-instance case of an administrative dispute over the request for invalidation of the trademark right of "Bing Fei Latu". Chengdu Qianbei Shao Trading Co., Ltd., the plaintiff of the trademark holder of "Bing Fei Latu", was ruled to lose the lawsuit. As a result, the ruling that the trademark right of "Bing Filatu" was invalidated by the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as the "Intellectual Property Office") was supported by the court.
It is understood that the plaintiff, Chengdu Qianbei Shao Trading Co., Ltd., has submitted an appeal to the court because it is not satisfied with the judgment.
01
Registered in 2016, it focuses on blueberry ice wine with 33 class trademarks
Judging from the historical context of the trademark in this case, the word trademark "Bing Filatu" with registration number of 16418894 was registered as a trademark of 33 international classifications, mainly covering all alcoholic beverages (except beer) including wine and spirits.
The plaintiff, Chengdu Qianbei Shao Trading Co., Ltd., filed an application on February 27, 2015, and officially obtained its ten-year exclusive trademark rights on April 21, 2016. Subsequently, Chengdu Qianbei Shao Trading Co., Ltd. and its holding company, Sichuan Bing Fei Latu Liquor Co., Ltd., created a blueberry ice wine brand named "Bing Fei Latu" with this trademark, and opened the market operation through various means of meeting and channel distribution.
From the perspective of online channels, despite the extremely low visibility of the product, there is still a store on the Jingdong platform selling blueberry ice wine products called "Ice Filatu", with a total of two specifications, namely Bing Filatu Select 750ml and Bing Filatu Special Selection 500ml, priced at 688 yuan/bottle and 1280 yuan/bottle respectively. From the price point of view, it is positioned in the middle and high-end and above.
A person familiar with the matter told WBO: "In the early days, this brand mainly went through the circle layer and sold such private domain channels. Although there is no concept of blueberry ice wine in the national standard for ice wine, and the brand name is somewhat similar to that of famous wineries such as Lafite and Latour, it uses the concept of blueberry to focus on the mid-to-high-end market, so it dares to rely on the price upward. ”
As for its online pricing, it further said: "Generally, this kind of smuggling domain products are mainly used online to set a price benchmark for offline channels, and the actual product price is not so high. ”
02
In 2020, Château Lafite de Rothschild filed a request for invalidation, which was granted a year later
On July 31, 2020, Château Lafite, the owner of the Lafite brand, as the applicant, formally filed a request for invalidation of the trademark No. 16418894 "Bing Filatu" owned by Chengdu Qianbei Shao Trading Co., Ltd.
Château Lafite (Rothschild) believes that the "LAFITE" and "Lafite" trademarks are highly well-known among the relevant Chinese public, and the "Lafite" trademark and its "LAFITE" and "Lafite" trademarks constitute similar trademarks on the same identical or similar goods.
One year later, on July 22, 2021, the Intellectual Property Office made a formal ruling confirming the invalidation of the trademark.
The Intellectual Property Office stated that the goods such as "alcoholic beverages (except beer)" approved for use in the trademark were the same or similar goods as the "alcoholic beverages (except beer)" approved for use in the trademarks "LAFITE" and "Lafite". Prior to the registration of the trademark, Château Lafite de Rothschild had combined the French "LAFITE" and the Chinese "Lafite" and promoted the use, and the two had formed a unique correspondence after popularization.
However, the trademarks "LAFITE" and "LAFITE" and "LAFITE" are similar in terms of word composition, calling, visual effects, etc., and have not formed a new meaning different from the latter as a whole, so if they coexist in the market on the same or similar goods, it is easy for the relevant public to confuse and misidentify the source of the aforesaid goods. Therefore, on the aforesaid goods, the trademark, together with the trademarks "LAFITE" and "LAFITE", constituted similar trademarks used on the same or similar goods under Article 30 of the 2013 Trademark Law, and a ruling was finally made on this basis.
However, subsequently, Chengdu Qianbei Shao Trading Co., Ltd., the owner of the trademark "Bing Filatu", filed a relevant administrative lawsuit with the Beijing Intellectual Property Court because it was dissatisfied with the ruling, and thus lost the aforementioned judgment.
03
It still has 33 classes of registered trademarks of "Bingfeilatu and Figure".
Judging from the current status information of the No. 16418894 "Bing Filatu" trademark, it is currently under the examination of the application for revocation/invalidation. However, the WBO query found that Chengdu Qianbeishao Trading Co., Ltd. also has a registered trademark of "Bingfeilatu and Tu", which is also registered in 33 classes with a registration number of 21163748, which was obtained on September 7, 2018 and is still in normal use.
At the same time, since September 2020, Chengdu Qianbei Shao Trading Co., Ltd. has intensively opened a round of "Bingfei series" 33 categories of trademark registrations with "Bingfei" as the keyword, including: Bingfei Meitu, Bingfei Natu, Bingfei Lutu, Bingfei Luotu, Bingfei Nuotu, Bingfei Blueprint, Bingfei Shengtu, Bingfei Situ, Bingfei Hongtu and other trademarks.
Among them, the "Bingfei Blueprint" trademark has become the current flagship brand of Bingfei Blueprint Liquor Group Co., Ltd., which has the same actual controller and legal person, and held a grand product launch conference in August 2023, also focusing on the blueberry ice wine category. Judging from the packaging design of its "Bing Fei Blueprint" product, it is very similar to "Bing Fei Latu" blueberry ice wine.
As for Chengdu Qianbeishao Trading Co., Ltd., in recent years, there have been a number of similar trademark applications that have been rejected due to opposition. Among them, the civil company of Fort Latour, as the holder of trademarks such as "Petit Latour", "Château Latour" and "Château Latour", filed an objection to the trademarks "Bing Latu" and "Baishan Bing Filatu" applied by Chengdu Qianbei Shao Trading Co., Ltd. at the announcement stage, and was subsequently ruled not to be registered by the Intellectual Property Office.
A legal person told the WBO: "A trademark opposition is an application for an opposition filed by the applicant who is dissatisfied with the trademark preliminarily approved and published by the Trademark Office of the State Intellectual Property Office, requesting the Trademark Office not to approve the registration of the trademark, and the application for trademark invalidation can actually be regarded as an upgrade of the trademark opposition application." However, the opposition can only be filed within three months of the preliminary examination announcement of the trademark, after which the opposition application can no longer be filed, and in reality, many applicants often miss these three months, so they can only go through the invalidation procedure, but the invalidation application will go through a longer ruling period. At the same time, as in this case, sometimes it will go to the judicial process, and the time period will be longer. For rights defenders, the cost has also increased significantly. ”
As for the appeal retrial of the case, the WBO will continue to pay attention to the latest developments.