I actually found this story sort of amusing. The Wall Street Journal reports that Chinese companies have greatly increased the number of trademarks they’re registering in the U. S.:
Huge numbers of Chinese citizens are seeking trademarks in the U.S., flooding the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with applications that officials say appear to be rife with false information.
The surge of filings from China has surprised the patent office. Officials say it could be fueled by cash subsidies that Chinese municipal governments are offering to citizens who register a trademark in a foreign country.
Trademark applications from China have grown more than 12-fold since 2013 and for fiscal 2017 totaled thousands more than the combined filings from Canada, Germany and the U.K. About one in every nine trademark applications reviewed by the U.S. agency is China-based, according to government data.
Patent and trademark officials say cash incentives could be a factor. As part of a national effort to ramp up intellectual-property ownership, China’s provincial governments are paying citizens hundreds of dollars in Chinese currency for each trademark registered in the U.S.
Basically, there are thousands of tiny Chinese companies, all selling identical merchandise on the Internet, that are registering for U. S. trademarks.
One can’t help but wonder if the Chinese aren’t applying, either deliberately or inadvertently, Saul Alinsky’s Rule #4. In his Rules for Radicals Mr. Alinsky’s fourth rule was “Make the enemy live up to their own rules.” If the U. S. wants strong intellectual property, we deserve to get it good and hard.
I know what I’d do if I were confronted with this flood of trademark applications. The present charge to register a trademarks is just a couple of hundred bucks. That doesn’t even cover costs. I’d raise it to at least $1,000 and just enjoy it while it lasts.
