Our Partner, James Wang, was interviewed by a major Chinese financial magazine Caijing (财经) for his opinion on the judgment of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court on a recent trademark refusal case concerning Huawei’s trademark for its Harmony operating system for smartphones and other electronic gadgets.
The case is an administrative lawsuit filed by Huawei against the China National Intellectual Property Administration (“CNIPA”). On grounds of potential confusion and similarity to two existing trademarks respectively held by a Beijing company and a Hebei company, the CNIPA issued a decision in May 2020 to refuse Huawei’s application for registration of the Chinese version of the trademark Harmony (in Chinese 鸿蒙，pronounced Hong Meng). The Chinese telecoms giant appealed to the Beijing Intellectual Property Court and sought to overturn the CNIPA’s refusal. The court however sided with the CNIPA, holding that the CNIPA didn’t err in refusing Huawei’s trademark application on the grounds that similar trademarks already exist.
Asked about the rationality of the refusal and what Huawei should probably do for the next step, James highlighted the importance of early filing under the first-to-file rule under the trademark law of China. Huawei's application for the Chinese version of the Harmony trademark was refused simply because it was filed later than the two existing prior trademarks, which Huawei failed to cancel. About possible next steps, James believes that it is not economically feasible for Huawei to shift to another trademark now that the HarmonyOS has gained such high fame; rather, Huawei may have to keep fighting to register the trademark while striving to remove the blocking prior trademarks.
Over 1 billion Huawei devices are being used worldwide. Huawei has launched the 2.0 version of the HarmonyOS on 2 June 2021, aiming to install the self-developed system on 300 million devices by December 2021.
