Posted on 04/24/2006 11:03:20 AM PDT by nickcarraway
If Orange launched a push email service called OrangeBerry in the UK, BlackBerry's maker could shut it down. But China Unicom is launching RedBerry this month, and there may be little Research In Motion (RIM) can do.
"China Unicom's RedBerry brand not only incorporates people's familiarity with the BlackBerry brand name, but it also fully embodies the symbolic meanings of China Unicom's new red logo," the company said. It acknowledged that RIM's BlackBerry is the most successful application of push email technology.
Peter Bullock, a partner with the Hong Kong office of Pinsent Masons and a specialist in intellectual property matters, said the Canadian company's options are limited.
To have an obvious redress under Chinese trademark laws, Bullock explained that RIM would have to show that Chinese consumers are being duped into believing that the RedBerry is associated with RIM's BlackBerry.
"Onerous hurdles to RIM's entry to the Chinese market mean their notoriety is very low at present, which again hinders trademark enforcement," he said.
In the absence of trademark infringement, RIM would need to fall back on the less potent Anti-Unfair Competition Law. "This provides a catch-all to allow a measure of redress in the event of unfair marketing, sales or promotion. Unfortunately, it is a law distinctly lacking in teeth."
It is not known if RIM wants to attempt to block sales of the RedBerry device or simply compete with it on the market. It plans to start selling its BlackBerry service in China through China Mobile (Hong Kong), the world's larges mobile phone operator by the end of May.
David Wolf makes an interesting point on The China Stock Blog about keyboards. The BlackBerry accommodates a full QWERTY keyboard, but with an enormous range of characters in Chinese scripts, pen-based input devices have dominated the Chinese PDA market to date. A QWERTY keyboard can be used for Chinese character input – but that becomes much more difficult when limited to using only one's thumbs.
Didn't the Chinese slow RIM's entry into China just long enough for RedBerry to get up and running?
Yes.
I hope all the people on FR who speak of China as this great capitalist nation take note. They use government force to take away market competition. Sounds more like communist mercantilism, than capitalism, to me.
Watch out, they do it in Russia as well
You don't seem to mind when the Chinese take the Red Hat Linux software, and rename it Red Flag though do you? In fact, that's how that process is supposed to work, listening to you guys that constantly defend it.
I don't have a problem if the copyright holder doesn't. Actually, since I'm not the copyright holder, what I think means nothing.
And besides, that's how they run their supercomputers!
Which is why you've been fighting against SCO, because they may own the copyrights and they don't want to give the Chinese free copies like you seem to.
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