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 �� 19:47, Andre Engels a ��crit :
2006/4/23, THD <theodoranian(a)gmail.com>om>:
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 �S�� (now all the Wikimedia projects in
Chinese
language, the first one pronunces as "wei", and the second
pronunces as
"gee"), ���o(first "wei", second "gee"), and �S��(first
"wei" ,
second "ke")etc.
�S�� 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 �S�� as the name, there was no famous name
of wiki
technology. The problem is "if we don't register �S��, the
Chinese Wikipedia
will face the challenge of changing its name (in Chinese)".
Wikipedia is one
word, but �S���ٿ� have 4 characters. In Chinese text trade
mark, the
government protect the usage of charater singly.When someone
registers �S��,
other people can't use �S�� 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(a)gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org