BJD makers threatened by China-based counterfeiter / trademarks

thank yooou, are lovely!

here is the post currently.

 

this is great! i ran it through google translate and it looks really thorough and easy to understand. is it okay if i post a link to it on my tumblr for those who might see it there? ^^

 

Do you guys think the title of them is thread should be changed to something more informative? By looking at it you would never think that the contents is what we are talking about right now.

Name squatting in China is a big issue for foreign companies. This totally reminds me of the case of Louis Vuitton vs Wang Jun in China, a Chinese man who patented the name Louis Vuitton in Chinese and won. So Louis Vuitton cannot even use their own Chinese name in China unless they buy the patent from him, which they did not. They fought in court but Louis Vuitton did not win.

Luo is being sneaky. They should take legal actions against Luo (he needs to be stopped) but can companies just keep their websites in their own language and country and still ship to Chinese customers? This way what Luo is doing won’t affect them as heavily. They can still sell TO (not in) China as exports.

 

Doll community in China is tying their best to fight against him. Many doll companies are getting together to prepare the lawsuit, so don't worry.

 

Patents are methods and inventions. Think of it this way. Patents= usually science, copyrights= art, trademarks= your identifier. We have to be clear to use the right term. This is not copyright, which protects the actual artwork, and it is not an invention, which is much much trickier to obtain a patent for.

Intellectual property is encompassed by copyrights, trademarks, and patents. Each one has their own rules. Trademarks protect the goodwill and nature of a logo, phrase, or name, for the benefit of the owner and the general public in order to avoid likelihood of confusion, tarnishment of the name, dilution, etc.

Under trademark law, Luo could prevent these companies from importing into China, as well as manufacturing inside China. He can prevent dealers from selling on Chinese channels as well. He has already taken down a dealer for Little Monica on Taobao. Additionally, he has registrations filed in EU, UK, and USA. The EU trademarks are about to issue in a few days, according to MerryDollRound, which can affect sales in 20+ countries. The USA ones have yet to be examined to a petitioner and are newly filed applications. The specimens in his applications he is using as proof of the “Use in Commerce” are either falsified boxes with the company logo and a recast doll or stolen pictures.

China is a first to file country concerning trademarks, meaning it doesn’t matter who uses it first, just who registered it first. Luo is behaving like a “trademark troll” or “trademark squatter.”

All of my information is stated for educational purposes purely, but this is why what he is doing is so risky.

 

Two things I want to mention, when talking about recasts to people outside the community, the words bootlegs or knock-offs better convey what a recast is. The other thing is that when communicating to people, that as angry as we get, it's best to keep anger out of the mix. Right now I feel full of anger but I responded to a post elsewhere with...more neutral expression and think I reached someone with logic where anger might have made them defensive. Ugh. I'm probably going to engage on a course of action I won't discuss here unless I get results. Also, I'm looking at some listings on ebay and am appalled by what's being sold there. I'm starting to use the 'report this listing' which probably won't help overall (I'm sure ebay doesn't care about anything other than money) but I figure pointing things out and making difficulty for these people to be an appropriate response.

 

dollhausen: Sadly ebay refuses to do anything about recast, many of us have been reporting every listing we see for years and getting nowhere. Unless it hurts them in their pocket they have absolutely no interest. The only thing I think we can do (re: Ebay at least) is keep filling in the Feedback boxes that float at the bottom of listing searches. Apparently an individual can only answer the survey once a week, but I have been listing that I want all recast/bootleg/counterfeit listings removed from the Doll section. You will see a little blue "Feedback" box down the right hand side of the screen when you do a search for BJD. Fill it in and send it back to them, just takes a few seconds.

 

Oh yes I see listing that even boldly stated that this is a recast head blah blah for sale. And ebay does not remove them. =(

 

Feel free to share wherever you feel its important, we should get everyone aware!

I feel like I need to add this in my post because people here in brazil are all "but its easy to prove something like this", they don't understand its china we are talking about. If louis vuitton couldnt, how hard will be for bjd companies to?

 

Recasts are also being sold on Amazon.

 

awesome! i just posted it on my tumblr, hopefully that will help it reach those who need it. ^^

i think that's really important to add, you should do it if you can!

 

If you’ve seen the MASSIVE list of dolls available as recasts (thousands) it doesnt matter to Luo or pro-recast people because LEGIT people wont able to buy dolls any more... recast people will still have thousands of dolls to choose from. They have never and will never care. Its legit owners and companies who will be punished.

There are mods in place. If they dont like a thread, they are very competent and will remove it. If you dont like the discussion, dont read the thread. Like honestly. People are upset about this and for now the mods on DoA have been kind and generous enough about it to let us discuss something here that hurts our hearts.

 

We already have been over that, why are you bringing it back? Let's not make unnecessary drama.

 

@nocturneofsilence: Honestly, if you do not want us to have this discussion, you should consider leaving this forum.

Just imagine you put hard work into a painting or made a BJD yourself. And this guy bought one of your BJDs, copied it and sold it. For a third of your sales price. He did not put any effort to create it. He uses your name/brand to sell it. Because he took the rights for your name/BJD brand. Then the only thing you can do is to pay money to him to still be able to sell the doll you made.

I am afraid linking to this site to outside people is not very useful, because if you are not DoA, you cannot see any content here.

@DoA Mod Squad: Is there a possibility to make this thread visible to anybody who searches for DoA?

 

I'm pretty sure you can see some doa topics when you don't have an account.... I used to search about pukipuki before buying one. I don't know if its just for some areas of the forum though.

 

That is good to know. But it should be clearly visible. Or some kind of short, concise article?

 

I agree, thats why I think moderators should create their own topic with everything clear in the first post. Not everyone has time to go thorugh a whole thread.

 

I read this thread without signing in earlier so this area of the forum is actually public =)

 

This may be a very stupid idea.... Not sure about other countries but is there a way we can cut off his payment or credit card transaction for fraud? For example, if he want to sell for US market, which is usually PayPal. If many flag him for fraud, and PayPal ban him which also ban from eBay transaction. Yes I understand he can make fake account but how many bank account can he open to verify as a seller account? I know when I signed up for a seller account on PayPal, I had to give a bunch of information. I didn't even sell that much online and PayPal made me sent in a bunch of document to verify my identity.

Another way is keep reporting his domain (if he even have any) to ICNN (the internet domain commission something...). Won't stop him but it will sure delay him from doing other immoral deeds.

 

The Paypal idea is a good one!!! We should appoint someone to contact Paypal immediately. One person in the US, maybe? Anyone knows his Paypal address? We also should remind Paypal to ban his credit card or bank account, not just the Paypal account, because he can surely make more.

On another hand, the title of this thread can be changed into a more appropriate one. It would make it easier to search through Google if we put "counterfeit" and this recaster name on it...