back to article Handbags at dawn: Hermes loses Chinese trademark battle

Sacré bleu! Apple isn’t the only big name brand facing a trademark KO in China at the moment, after French fashion giant Hermes lost a key legal battle with China’s Trademark Appeal Board. Shanghai Daily reported that although the purveyor of luxury goods has had its English language name registered since as far back as 1977 …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    What a non-story

    Chinese company registers a trademark that was not registered before, contested by some French "giant" company with a different name that few people have heard of before.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    We all know about Hermes, Conran*

    But why not Zoidberg?

    *I know, Conrad...

    1. David Schmidt
      Thumb Up

      Re: We all know about Hermes, Conran*

      Good news, everyone! You'll be secretly delivering handbags and iPads out of their country of origin under the nose of Zapp Brannigan, chairman of the trademark board!

  3. Dan Paul
    Pirate

    Time for the Western World to wake up, stop doing business with China!!!!!

    The western world did just fine without China before it became the lowest possible wage labor supplier and moron manufacturers flocked there to take advantage of the slave labor.

    Apparently they are unsatisfied to be on the verge of bankrupting western world middle class wage earners across the globe by driving down the cost of labor but now the Chinese cannot understand what a legally binding contract means.

    We need to pull every possible manufacturing contract with China and move it back to Western Countries (or trustworthy Eastern Countries? Is this Possible?),regardless of the cost.

    China is in an economic war with the rest of the civilized world, we just are too stupid and politically correct to recognize it. They steal and copy everything they can get their hands on and we stand idly by with our thumbs up our butts waiting for them to act like responsible honest people. They repeatedly break in to our manufacturers and government data files and steal what they want.

    It is LONG past time that we woke up and stopped doing business with China. The only opportunity there is a losing proposition where short term gains are quickly offset by long term political and intelectual larceny.

    1. FIA Silver badge

      Re: Time for the Western World to wake up, stop doing business with China!!!!!

      So you're annoyed that China seems quite good at capitalism?

      "..but now the Chinese cannot understand what a legally binding contract means...."

      Xenophobic racial overtones aside, isn't the point of the story that they can?

      French company didn't bother to register it's name in Chinese, when registering in China. (I mean why would you register your trademark in the local language??) French company isn't a large and significant make in China (which just happens to be an emerging potential lucrative market with rapid increase in social standards of the emerging wealthy) and expects to be given special treatment because it would like to be?

      Doesn't work like that.

      "We need to pull every possible manufacturing contract with China and move it back to Western Countries"

      If we did this we would be in serious financial trouble. (Mind you, if China politely asks for that money we owe we could be too.)

      1. Dan Paul
        Pirate

        Re: Re: Time for the Western World to wake up, stop doing business with China!!!!!

        China good at Capitalism? No, I said they were good at ripping people off. There IS a difference. China only follows the "rules" when they want to, most first world governments try to follow the rules (until someone else gets an unfair advantage).

        In this case the chinese company that registered the trademark clearly did so in bad faith because they are not the company Hermes that already had the english versions trademarked. This case is the same as if I used a slightly different font to register the name Apple.

        Screw the so called "serious financial trouble"... let the frigging chinese call in the loan. We can say and do the same thing as the Molly Macguires did when the "law" came to throw them out of their homes.

        Now exactly what was xenophobic and racial when you describe a country China and their people Chinese...using the names and words commonly available? Oh, yeah you're one of those "PC" people who don't want to come out and say what the real situation is because "you're too polite" (read as too shortsighted and cowardly)

        If you value your life style and your life as it is now, you would get behind an anti-chinese manufacturing stance. Globalism is NOT in the best interest of people in the first world, it will be the death of our standard of living. This is not racist, or xenophobic it is simply common sense as the decline of our civilisation has already begun and will get worse.

        Reread this in 5 to 10 years and see if you agree then (when it will be too late).

        1. Tom 38
          Trollface

          Re: Re: Re: Time for the Western World to wake up, stop doing business with China!!!!!

          Hi Dan!

          It's not xenophobic to say 'China' or 'Chinese'. It's really very xenophobic to insist that the Chinese are constantly trying to steal all our secrets, destabilise our currencies and 'bankrupt the middle class'.

          Hope that helps!

          1. Dan Paul

            Re: Re: Re: Re: Time for the Western World to wake up, stop doing business with China!!!!!

            So speaking the truth is xenophobic? Prove me wrong!

            They ARE stealing our secrets (plenty of proof there, thousands of documents stolen using Chinese computer systems by Chinese Hackers ), they ARE destabilizing our currencies (are you deaf, dumb & blind?), they have lowered their wages artificially (lots of proof for this), the result is the average middle class wage earner can no longer find decent paying manufacturing jobs. Proof for this claim is self evident, look in the paper or check the unemployment line in any US Rust belt city)

    2. Notas Badoff
      Megaphone

      Re: Is this Possible?

      No.

      Guess who the sole source for absolutely vital components for the US's infrastructure is...

      (It seems there is a 2000 char limit on postings, so I can't tell you the backstory - shame, that)

    3. Tom 38
      Thumb Down

      Re: Time for the Western World to wake up, stop doing business with China!!!!!

      """

      Apparently they are unsatisfied to be on the verge of bankrupting western world middle class wage earners across the globe by driving down the cost of labor but now the Chinese cannot understand what a legally binding contract means.

      """

      Really? Yellow peril? Cmon...

      Besides which, you have a non-argument. Inflation in China has been a steady 5% for quite some time, it won't be too many more years until we are the cheap option for China, not vice-versa.

      1. Zippy the Pinhead

        @Tom 38

        That would be true however the Chinese government artificially manipulates its currency to stay the bargain it actually is.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "..given its fame across the planet.."

    sorry - never heard of them

    Unless the statement in the article was sarcasm

    1. ratfox
      Angel

      Seriously?

      You are a lucky married man, or single. Them things are expensive.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Technically, it's a 4-stroke difference

    That's what the 王 radical adds to 玛.

    </hairsplit>

    1. AdamWill

      Re: Technically, it's a 4-stroke difference

      yeah, I was gonna say, whatever technique el reg is using to render that radical in one stroke, I want to know about it.

    2. Chimp

      Re: Technically, it's a 4-stroke difference

      And it's not pinyin.

      Also love the general assault on Chinese law.

  6. Derk

    Moving Chinese production to elsewhere

    It could be possible to move to other Eastern countries. In my last company, the assigned labour cost to production in the Philippines, was the same as that of China. With the Billions that Apple has in the "Bank" they could design their products to be made in the US by robot. For those that are interested the cost of assembling an electronic circuit board, which has been designed for automatic assembly is the same, pretty much the world over. The differences in price, although small are usually attributed to the amortisation of the capital costs of the insertion equipment. Once the machines are paid for, then there is little in it. However if the designer has added numerous components that require manual assembly by a person, then China is often 40% cheaper.

  7. Eddy Ito

    不是拼音

    "brand itself with the pinyin moniker "

    Technically pinyin is the romanization of the Simplified Chinese characters and in this case would be "ài mǎ shì" but I don't know what is going on with Mary officially loving her horse or some such. ;)

    As far as moving manufacturing, it's already happening as rising wages in China and shipping costs are making many things more profitable to build locally. See here and here.

  8. NinjasFTW
    Alert

    moving production out of China

    I was thinking about the numerous reports about the cost of production going up in China and started to wonder what China would do if big manufacturers started pulling out.

    China is already restricting the supply of numerous resources such as rare earth metals etc to only Chinese bases companies.

    I would be willing to bet that if Apple (or anyone) tried to move production to some where else they would find it very hard to find the materials needed to build the latest shiney gadget.....

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      "what China would do if big manufacturers started pulling out"

      You know, in a country that happens to represent no less than one sixth of the entire world population, that is waking up industrially speaking and whose population is yet to become middle-class for its vast majority (ensuring a growth market of the kind that makes marketing execs foam at the mouth), I think a few gwai-lo companies pulling out is not really going to make all that much of a difference. They are the ones with the industrial know-how these days.

      To us, on the other hand, China no longer making our goods is going to hurt immeasurably. The Chinese government knows that, and I dare say all "First-World" governments know it as well.

      Get used to it, because it is not going away any time soon. Occidental countries have forfeited their production industry, obeying the siren calls of pure capitalism, and that situation is going to take more than just a generation to reverse. Whatever you may think of the Chinese, they have the upper hand now, and they know it. So Hermès can get stuffed, and others with it. They will do as they damn well please (which is what multinational companies of all kinds have been doing up to now), and nobody can do anything about it - including said multinationals.

      That is just about the only funny thing in all this : that multinational companies who have always operated in total disregard of anything they could not benefit from, who have pressured and lobbied and paid and subverted anyone and anything that could possibly get in their way, suddenly find themselves in front of a cultural brick wall without any means of pressure or influence.

      Watching them squirm will be a small measure of payback for all the jobs they have taken without a thought for the people who depended on them for a living.

      That said, it won't solve our economic issues either, but at least they'll be suffering with us for a change, in a manner of speaking.

      1. Chimp

        Re: "what China would do if big manufacturers started pulling out"

        There is one more funny aspect to this story, particularly for those who got their advanced international business and economics degrees from Fox and the Daily Mail.

        Who now buys most of the tat these "giants"knock out? You know, overpriced watches, bags and shoes?

        The west could in theory stop buying from China, but you'd do it over the cold, dead bodies of the board of LVMH, who know what side their bread is buttered on, are familiar with the smell of roses and so on. Boeing would also get a bit weepy.

  9. MJI Silver badge
    Joke

    Perhaps they should use.

    Viraat instead.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like