“Jie Rou” Failed in Suing “ Rou Jie”

In July 2014, C&S Paper Co.,Ltd., the owner the trademark “Jie Rou” (meaning clean and soft in Chinese) and the first modern household paper manufacture company in mainland China which has been successfully listed in Shenzhen stock exchange, found that a paper corporation in Nantong (Jiangsu Province, China) used the Chinese characters “ Rou Jie” on its paper products without permission. Considering that the latter corporation infringed its trademark rights, C&S brought the lawsuit to court, demanding that the defendant stops infringement immediately, compensating the economic loss of 10,000 yuan and publishing a statement in the newspaper to eliminate negative influence. Recently, the court delivered the first verdict, announcing that the characters “Rou” and “Jie” in C&S’s trademark are general words and it is hard to determine whether these characters used in the defendant’s products constitute trademark use. Therefore, the court rejected C&S’s claims.