(Assassin's Creed, "Leap of Faith")
What do you think of when it comes to Assassin's Creed? 3A masterpiece, leap of faith, European style, the author vaguely remembers that when I was a freshman, my roommate spent more than 6,000 yuan on Assassin's Creed, while my three-star notebook with a cost of more than 3,000 yuan was hard to get into the interface at the beginning. Later, I saved up a relatively high-end desktop computer. Facing generations of new works, I had no time to play because I was busy with work and life.
According to Ubisoft's official announcement, as of September 2019, the cumulative sales of the "Assassin's Creed" series have exceeded 140 million copies, making it a well-deserved world-renowned game IP.
There is no doubt that Ubisoft should enjoy a series of intellectual property rights including trademarks and copyrights for "Assassin's Creed". So, when sellers on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com produce and sell clothing, ornaments and other products with the words "Assassin's Creed" without Ubisoft's permission, Ubisoft should protect their rights from them and request the court to order these merchants to stop selling these "pirated" clothing and demand compensation?
The reality is not so. Not only can Ubisoft Company not asks for compensation from these infringing merchants, but is instead worked on behalf of others to take millions or even tens of millions of infringing compensation. Even Ubisoft itself spent a huge amount of financial resources, energy and time to get the "Assassin's Creed" trademark from this mysterious force.
This "atypical" large-scale "Assassin's Creed" trademark rights protection incident is very interesting after digging deeply.
A "different" in trademark rights protection revealed in a public trial
On July 25, the Jiangsu Higher People's Court publicly tried a retrial case of infringement of trademark rights. The applicant for the retrial was Nanjing Flounder Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Flounder Company), and the respondent was Guangzhou Huayinong Trading Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Flounder Company).
The reason why the flounder company applied for retrial was that the second instance court, Nanjing Intermediate People's Court, found that it infringed the exclusive right of Hua Yinong Company's "Assassin's Creed" trademark No. 17609027 and the graphic trademark No. 7751911, and changed the first instance non-infringement judgment of Nanjing Railway Transport Court, and ruled that it would stop infringement and compensate Hua Yinong Company for 20,000 yuan.
The information on this trial is limited, so this article will not go into details.
Seeing this, some friends may ask: Don't these two trademarks belong to Ubisoft? Why did this Hua Yinong Company protect its rights again?A powerful tool? This is also one of the two most interesting parts of the whole thing, and I will talk about this part below.
The case of Hua Yinong Company suing Halibut Company is not complicated in itself:
The right holder of the "Assassin's Creed" text and graphic trademarks, including the above two trademarks, Lion Mountain (Hong Kong) Industrial Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Lion Mountain Company), authorized and licensed Hua Yinong Company as the only general agent in mainland China, representing him to protect his rights and fight against counterfeiting. The halibut company sells "Assassin's Creed"-related clothing in the Tmall store it operates. The description of the clothing products is "Assassin's Creed 7 Hero Origin Hooded Fake Two-Piece T-Shirt Short-Sleeve Clothes Jacket Summer Animation Game COS Peripheral", and the accompanying pictures read "Assassin's Creed - Two-Piece T-Shirts", "Assassin's Creed: T-Shirts", and the product has the logo pattern of Assassin's Creed (i.e., the trademark No. 7751911 approximate logo).
The case is relatively simple and the amount is not large. However, there are so many cases that cannot stand such a thing!
There are hundreds and thousands of clothing manufacturers like Flounder Company that are sued by Hua Yinong Company with trademark authorization!
According to Zhichanbao Commercial Compliance Data Product Search, Hua Yinong Company was involved in more than 1,080 lawsuits. Except for one contract dispute, all of them were infringement of trademark rights and unfair competition cases, and Hua Yinong Company was all plaintiffs in the first instance.
These more than 1,000 trademark cases originated in the late 2015, and (the filing date) were concentrated in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. It reached its peak in 2019, with a year of up to 417 cases. In 2022, the number of newly filed cases has dropped to single digits, basically declaring that the market has stopped.
Observe some judgments on the trademark "rights protection" of Hua Yinong Company, and you will find several characteristics:
First, Hua Yinong Company's trademark protection is concentrated around clothing. If the defendant uses the "Assassin's Creed" text or logo on the product link or product pattern, he will basically win the case in full. Even if a small number of cases are not supported by the first instance court, Hua Yinong Company will insist on appealing and thus change the judgment; on the other hand, Hua Yinong Company also has a small number of cases, and the object of rights protection is the use of the "Assassin" text by the manufacturer. Such cases basically end in their defeat, even if Hua Yinong Company reaches the retrial stage.
Second, two-thirds of the cases ended with Hua Yinong Company withdrawing the lawsuit and reconciling with the defendant.
Third, the case is closed by a judgmentIn the case, the compensation amount started with 20,000 yuan. This is the second-instance judgment of the Huayinong Company vs. Flounder Company mentioned at the beginning.
According to this estimate, Hua Yinong Company has relied on trademark rights protection in recent years, and its revenue may not be less than 15 million yuan!
Ubisoft's latest "Assassin's Creed" is priced at 298 yuan in the first regular version, and you have to sell 50,000 copies to earn this money.
Who asked Ubisoft, can the Valhalla sell this money to Chinese players? This is outrageous.
Fantasy drift of the "Assassin's Creed" trademark
Next, the author will introduce to you the reverse notes of the "Assassin's Creed" trademark.
The previous article has already appeared Ubisoft, Hua Yi Nong Company, and Lion Mountain Company, but they are not the original applicants for trademarks such as "Assassin's Creed".
The initial applicant was named Guangzhou Jiufeng Trading Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Jiufeng Company). The company has now been renamed Assassin (Guangdong) Brand Operation Co., Ltd. After Jiufeng Company applied for the graphic and text trademark of "Assassin's Creed", it was transferred to the Lion Mountain Company established in Hong Kong, and then Lion Mountain Company authorized Hua Yinong Company to protect its rights.
On the surface, the three companies seem to be incompatible, but after digging into the industrial and commercial information and judgment information, you will find that they are actually a family.
The only director of Lion Mountain Company, former legal representative and sole shareholder of Jiufeng Company, and the legal representative and major shareholder of Hua Yinong Company are all the same person, as shown in the figure below.
That's it, these trademarks have fallen into two ways (including Ubisoft, three ways). It is obviously a family's rights protection business, and there is an additional procedure for authorizing overseas companies, which instantly becomes very "breaking".
What did Ubisoft react?
Objectively speaking, Ubisoft has always been unwilling to register Chinese trademarks. In recent years, it has only begun to register trademarks of its games one after another. This is too late: others use your trademark to kill everyone and make tens of millions of dollars, and you remember this.
Ubisoft's reaction was not even fast enough for the "infringer".
One of the hundreds of companies sued by Hua Yinong Company, there is one with a bad temper called Nanjing Gaku E-Commerce Co., Ltd. (now renamed Huaian Gaku E-Commerce Co., Ltd.), and Gaku Company also has the sales of Assassin's Creed.The clothing and the text "Assassin's Creed" on the product title were sued for trademark infringement, and more than once were sued.
In a rage, Gaku Company filed an invalid declaration of graphic trademark No. 7751911 under the name of Shizishan Company. His reason was:
The disputed trademark icon points to a game called Assassin's Creed, which appears many times in the game, with high popularity and influence. If the respondent improperly uses the popularity and influence of "Assassin's Creed" to register a disputed trademark, it should be declared invalid. In summary, the request is to declare the disputed trademark invalid in accordance with Articles 32 and 45 of the Trademark Law.
However, the Trademark Review and Adjudication Committee did not support this invalidation declaration.
The result is not important, it can be regarded as a disguised collaboration between the right holder and the infringer to deal with another "right holder".
The next step was Ubisoft personally, and in 2019, when Hua Yinong's company's most intensive rights protection period, it filed an invalid declaration against many "Assassin's Creed" texts and graphic trademarks of Lion Mountain Company.
Taking the invalidity declaration of trademark No. 7751191 as an example, Ubisoft made the reason:
The respondent applied for a total of 176 trademarks in multiple categories, involving goods and services in multiple categories. All the trademarks applied for are related to the applicant's Assassin'S Creed series. The applicant's registration of the disputed trademark is a plagiarism and copying of the applied series of trademarks, which is a case of "acquisition of registration by improper means", which violates the principle of honesty and trustworthiness. In summary, we request that the disputed trademark be declared invalid in accordance with Article 7, Article 44, Paragraph 1, etc. of the Trademark Law.
The Trademark Review and Adjudication Board supported the request and declared it invalid, as was the case with other trademarks.
However, Ubisoft made another mysterious operation next, which is also the second highlight of the entire incident.
Ubisoft made an invalid declaration request on October 29, 2018, and the Trade and Evaluation Committee made a ruling on September 23, 2019: The trademark is invalid.
The following trademark process shows that they did not receive the invalid declaration sent to Ubisoft and returned it to the Trademark Office. After another half a year, Lion Mountain Company was dissatisfied with the ruling and went to the Beijing Intellectual Property Court for trademark confirmation.
What are you afraid of when you complain? Half a year later, I don’t know what happened. Ubisoft submitted a trademark transfer application and wanted to buy these trademarks and the trademark transfer was successfully completed.It was done. During the trial a few days ago, the legal representative of Hua Yinong Company also mentioned the matter and confirmed that it had been transferred to Ubisoft.
In other words, Hua Yinong Company has made money from both the intellectual property creators and infringers of "Assassin's Creed". The amount of the former is unknown, and the latter exceeds tens of millions. Such operations can only be capitalized "servers".
What is embarrassing is that the Beijing Intellectual Property Court rejected the Lion Mountain Company’s lawsuit and upheld the invalid ruling of the Trade and Evaluation Committee. Ubisoft Company struggled for a long time, but the ending was: I invalidated my trademark.
Of course, since there are too many "Assassin's Creed" trademarks applied for registration by Lion Mountain Company, most other trademarks have not been invalid yet. If the package can be successfully transferred, it will be a good result.
Epilogue
As an industry bystander, we have heard a lot of this kind of thing. There are always some people who exploit loopholes in the system, without too much words, and understand everything.
Thinking from another perspective, from the trend of Hua Yinong's rights protection cases, the number of cases has decreased significantly in the past two years, which means washing hands. The reason cannot be that "it has been earned enough". It is just that the main owner Ubisoft entered the market, using the means of removing the firewood from the cauldron, making the so-called rights protection a tree without roots and water without source, which is unsustainable, and it can be regarded as a belated "light of the right way".
The "Assassin's Creed" trademark has entered a new stage. Ubisoft recommends that Ubisoft select several clothing manufacturers that have been sued for trademark infringement and authorize the production of "Assassin's Creed" peripherals. There are three reasons:
First: These merchants actively produce Assassin's Creed peripheral clothing, and their designs are unique. They can be said to understand both "Assassin's Creed" and players and customers;
Second: For the strength of the manufacturer, you can effectively screen the judgment of Hua Yinong Company in the past. Through the claims, the judgment of the compensation, and the relevant evidence of Hua Yinong Company, you can objectively draw conclusions and save the research process;
Three: Both sides have had a "common enemy". All manufacturers expressed their recognition and praise of Ubisoft and "Assassin's Creed" in their defense. Some manufacturers also helped to rescue Ubisoft, a comrade in the same trenches, and it is recommended to fully consider
