The Case Of Two CITS Closed In Shanghai

A mediation agreement has been reached between China International Travel Service Head Office and China International Travel Service (USA), on the trademark infringement case under the auspices of a judge from Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court.

Under the agreement, the USA CITS company shall stop infringing on CITS's registered trademarks including the global design, CITS, and the Chinese name immediately, stop publishing misleading information on the USA CITS site and pay CITS CNY100,000 compensate for economic loss of CITS.

CITS gained the exclusive rights to use the registered trademarks of the global design, CITS and the Chinese name GuoLv during the period 1995 to 1996.

The legal representative of USA CITS Yu Jun used to work in a travel agency subsidiary of CITS. Yu registered the USA CITS in February 2003 in the USA, and set up a representative office in Hangzhou in August 2004. In July 2005, USA CITS gained the registered trademark ownership in the USA of the global design, which is exactly the same as that of CITS.

The court decreed that USA CITS can not use the global design, CITS, and GuoLv trademarks in China even though it had registered the ownership of the global design trademark. In addition, untrue statements on its website are false propaganda, and constitute unfair competition against CITS. Thus USA CITS should take the civil liability to stop the infringement and compensate for the loss of CITS.