Gu Haiyan,

Director of Legal Department, SINA Corporation

As a well-known internet portal in China, the most acute problem that Sina has encountered during its trademark development is passing-off. Causing by misconception and defective mechanism, some people undercut their competitors and make huge profit through trademark abuse and misuse.

The trademark problems for internet industry are changing. Besides selling infringing goods or using other’s registered trademarks on one’s own website, internet trademark infringement problems can also be seen in cybersquatting, using other’s registered trademark to hyperlink one’s own web page and paying to obtain searching priority in search engines. The newly emerged internet trade methods not only impact the traditional trade rules but also challenge the administration of the authorities.

Since the promulgation of the Trademark Law, the trademark protection in China is gradually improving, the number of intentional trademark infringement cases is on the decrease. Trademark registration is more efficient and the protection on trademark is further strengthened.

However it is undeniable that the trademark legislative framework still needs to be improved. The current laws and regulations, including the Trademark Law, Anti Unfair Competition Law, and Measures for Administration of Enterprise Name Registration, have their limitations in practice, they lack clear provisions on how to solve problems such as the conflicts between trademark and domain names, internet trademark infringements, etc. It is feasible to solve the problems by making some prominent, harmful and easily recognized behavior under the administrative scope of laws and regulations, with the reference of the undergoing revisions of laws and regulations and the international conventions. Internet trademark infringement differs greatly from the traditional trademark infringement, therefore more international cooperation on legislative work should be explored. International treaties and cooperation may disentangle the knotty problems such as how to determine trademark infringement for cross-boarder e-commerce with trademark registration only in one country; how to determine infringement situs for selling infringing goods through internet internationally, and the applicable law when determining transnational e-commerce trademark infringement.