Re: CF Martin name stolen in China
Would the martin logo be a trademark issue then?
Yes.
In general the trademark issue is messier than copyright and patents because the latter two kinda sometimes somewhat transport to other countries mostly automatically, but trademarks are first-come first-serve by country.
People also need to stop thinking of "the Chinese". The central Chinese government has very little control over what some wacky sweat shop does when printing logos onto guitars. Likewise copyright. It's not that they simply allow pirating software and music by state law. I don't want to imply the government is doing enough against it but many people in the West have this image of a Stalinist Moloch where every sack of rice falling over has a written permit by the government.
It's a simple matter of priorities over there, just as it is here. For the US government intellectual property has relatively higher value than other law enforcement since this country has more or less given up on making things that are
not intellectual property. And crime around physical good is pretty rare here (not counting drugs). So we play lots of lawyer games around copyright, patents and trademarks. The Chinese government even when it comes to non-corrupt appropriate action to enforce laws just has bigger problems that trademark and copyright, starting with theft of physical property.
And I have to remind you that many of us here in the US think that our patent system is insane. I don't see smart people elsewhere rush to defend it on their soil. In any case the major reason why you can't enforce a patent in China, even if it is valid there, is that the courts over there only roll their eyes back into their head if you come in with some crazy patent like Apple's new "patent on negative reviews". As do many US judges, but at least here you can force them to flip a coin and you get a 50:50 chance to win. You have no leverage to enforce ridiculous patents in China.
Or try to enforce DiMarzio's brilliant double-cream humbucker trademark in China. Good luck
I guess the summary is that some of our intellectual property laws are obviously insane to an outside observer, and that makes enforcing any of them (even the sane ones) much harder.
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