Siwei Zhong

Danone Gives Wahaha A Hard Trademark Lesson

it will be a dilemma to the Chinese authority too.

In the 11th 5-year plan, developing self-owned intellectual property is a top priority for the country, China understands it can never move to the next level of economic development if it is still doing those low value added labour intensive OEM type of manufacturing. Personally I've seen how the government is promoting IPR aggressively, China is not only doing that just for the sake of comforting the US government, but also for its own economic sustainability.

However, before it can develop such an atmosphere to promote local IPR, the first thing they need to do is to educate the Chinese enterprises to respect law and IPR. If the Wahaha trademark was assigned to Danone, China/Wahaha has to let go the nationalist sentiment.

Though the end result is remain to be seen, I bet it will end up settled outside the court.

I do believe the Wahaha founder Mr. Zong didn't realize what he signed up in 1996. I recently have an experience to negotiate an intellectual property related contract with a leading Chinese network equipment company, I was almost shocked to see the standard of the contract they drafted...