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Watching a company grow and buying trademarks with its name or products in your country before the business expands there seems a profitable niche for the applicant and a major headache for the new company. And that’s what Tesla Motors is now facing, with a Chinese man suing it for trademark infringement.
According to Bloomberg, Zhan Baosheng applied for the Tesla English name trademark in September 2006, three years after the automaker was founded. China’s State Administration of Industry and Commerce (SAIC) granted him the trademark in 2009 for a period of 10 years.
The company is said to have contacted Zhan in 2012 to buy the trademark, with the man refusing the final 2 million yuan ($322,500) offer. In 2013, Tesla came in and asked SAIC to cancel Zhan’s trademark so they can enter the market, thing that happened in July the same year.
Now, Zhan has filled in a lawsuit charging Tesla with trademark infringement, demanding the company to shut down its activity on the Chinese market and pay him 23.9 million yuan ($3.9 million).
“We believe that Zhan has not acted reasonably in returning our trademarks to us, which is why we opened the various proceedings before the Chinese administrative bodies,” Tesla’s spokesman Simon Sproule said in response to queries about the meetings with Zhan.
“There can be no legitimate dispute that we used these trademarks first as we were the ones that created them. Zhan’s is a cynical attempt to steal a property that we spent time and effort creating, and put into use long before Zhan’s crass attempts to steal them from us,” he added.
Before these events, Zhan tried to register more Tesla-related trademarks, including the Logo and the firm’s Chinese transliteration. He already owns the Tesla.cn website domain along with trademarks for German automaker Loremo, Robert Bosch GmbH’s Cobasays and the defunct Cuil search engine.
It seems the man has made a business in searching for expanding companies and filling in trademark applications for their names and products to extort money. Tesla said his lawsuit won’t affect their operations in China.
The company is said to have contacted Zhan in 2012 to buy the trademark, with the man refusing the final 2 million yuan ($322,500) offer. In 2013, Tesla came in and asked SAIC to cancel Zhan’s trademark so they can enter the market, thing that happened in July the same year.
Now, Zhan has filled in a lawsuit charging Tesla with trademark infringement, demanding the company to shut down its activity on the Chinese market and pay him 23.9 million yuan ($3.9 million).
“We believe that Zhan has not acted reasonably in returning our trademarks to us, which is why we opened the various proceedings before the Chinese administrative bodies,” Tesla’s spokesman Simon Sproule said in response to queries about the meetings with Zhan.
“There can be no legitimate dispute that we used these trademarks first as we were the ones that created them. Zhan’s is a cynical attempt to steal a property that we spent time and effort creating, and put into use long before Zhan’s crass attempts to steal them from us,” he added.
Before these events, Zhan tried to register more Tesla-related trademarks, including the Logo and the firm’s Chinese transliteration. He already owns the Tesla.cn website domain along with trademarks for German automaker Loremo, Robert Bosch GmbH’s Cobasays and the defunct Cuil search engine.
It seems the man has made a business in searching for expanding companies and filling in trademark applications for their names and products to extort money. Tesla said his lawsuit won’t affect their operations in China.
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