By Dan Harris
February 26, 2018
The title to this post is a gross oversimplification meant to prove a point or, more accurately, disprove a myth. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had companies swoon over the idea of spending big money to secure a patent and pooh-pooh my suggestion to spend small money to secure a trademark. Honestly, most of these companies don’t really get it.
Let me explain.
1. Patents are virtually always expensive to get and virtually always expensive to protect.
2. Trademarks are virtually always inexpensive to get and a lot of the time inexpensive to protect.
Let me further explain, first with patents:
1. Securing a patent (other than a design patent) typically costs three to four times what a trademark costs. This is true in China, the United States, Europe, Canada, Mexico, wherever.
2. If you believe someone is violating your patent and you send them a cease and desist letter to get them to stop doing so, there is a pretty good chance they will claim there is no violation. And after you explain to them why there is a violation, there is still a pretty good chance they will explain to you why you are wrong. If their orthopedic device is exactly like yours but for some relatively unimportant button somewhere, they will claim that relatively unimportant button is actually important and it means they are not violating your patent.
3. If you go to the e-commerce sites on which they are selling the orthopedic device that almost certainly does violate your patent and you ask that e-commerce site to take down the infringing product, the odds are good that site will tell you that they are not patent lawyers and you will need a court order or a judgment for them to take it down. This is generally true of tall the leading e-commerce sites around the world.
4. The above means that if you want to stop your competitor from selling what you see as the infringing orthopedic device you must sue and you likely will need to hire an expensive expert to prove the infringement. Few things in life cost more than patent litigation, and since my law firm does patent litigation, I know whereof I speak on this.
But trademarks are much simpler and much cheaper:
1. Securing a trademark typically costs 1/3 to 1/4 less to secure than a patent. This is true pretty much everywhere.
2. If you believe someone is violating your trademark and you send them a cease and desist letter to get them to stop doing so, there is a decent chance they will stop, especially if they are not in the counterfeiting business. If I brand my orthopedic devices “The Harris Special Orthopedic Device” and secure trademarks for that name and someone else uses that very same name, they are going to have a tough time claiming they are not violating my trademarks — assuming I have the registered trademark in the relevant countries.
3. If you go to the e-commerce sites and request that the product that is violating your trademark be taken down (and it is in fact violating your registered trademark), there is a very good chance it will be taken down. This is generally true of the leading e-commerce sites around the world. Take the “Harris Special Orthopedic Device” as the example. It does NOT take a lawyer to know that if I have the registered trademark in China and the United States for “Harris Special Orthopedic Device” (in the right class), anyone else selling “Harris Special Orthopedic Device” in China or the United States (that did not come from me) is violating my trademark. My law firm’s success rate in taking down offending trademarks is really really high.
4. And should you choose to sue for a trademark violation, proving the trademark violation is oftentimes relatively easy.
Oh, and one more thing. To grossly generalize. patent protection in China courts tends not to be as strong as in either the United States or Europe. Whereas China trademark protection tends to be surprisingly strong.
There. I’ve said my piece.
Your thoughts?
Read More >> https://www.chinalawblog.com/2018/02/china-and-worldwide-trademarks-good-patents-bad.html
