New Balance disagreed with the ruling for a host of reasons, one of which was that the company barely used the Xin Bai Lun name except on some advertisements and websites, never on shoes. It said the name hardly constituted a trademark. The company has hired a new counsel and appealed the decision. But so far New Balance has lost the fight it picked—and as it waits for a higher court’s ruling, it’s worth asking whether it’s time for them to bow out.
China’s trademark laws, though relatively advanced, break with Western ones in several key ways. The most important one: China is a first-to-file country. “This means that whomever files a trademark first gets it,” says Dan Harris, a partner at Harris Sliwoski in Seattle focusing on China, regardless of whether another company is already making a product with the same name in, say, America.