A Trademark Fight Over Dior’s J’adore Fragrance Bottle Added to Precedential Cases List in China

Fashion Law Blog reports…

A lawsuit centering on the shape of a Christian Dior fragrance bottle has been added to a list of “Guiding” cases in China. Due to the decision of the Judicial Committee of China’s Supreme People’s Court to add the case to the running list of precedential proceedings, the Dior case, which got its start in 2014 when Dior sought to extended its international trademark registration for the three-dimensional trademark for its J’adore bottle to include protections in China, and its outcome “will now be binding on all Chinese courts.”

Following losses before lower trademark bodies in China, the Supreme People’s Court sided with Dior in April 2018, holding that the Chinese Trademark Office may have erred in denying the established brand protection for the water droplet-shaped bottle of its famous J’adore fragrance. According to a statement from the Supreme People’s Court at the time, “After a two-hour public hearing, the top court revoked the original rulings made by local courts in Beijing, which rejected the company’s application to register the bottle design as a trademark.” 

Dior’s counsel had been clashing with the Chinese trademark bodies since its application for registration for its interestingly-shaped fragrance bottle was rejected in July 2015 by the China Trademark Office, which held that the bottle’s shape and design did not meet “the standards of a trademark.” 

Appealing the decision to the Chinese Trademark Review and Adjudication Board (“TRAB”), Dior’s legal team argued that the distinctive shape of its J’adore bottle – which was first introduced in 1999 and enjoys trademark protection with the World Intellectual Property Organization, as well as with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (where is has been protected by a trade dress registration since 2002) – should also be subject to China-specific protections.

Read more at  https://www.thefashionlaw.com/a-trademark-fight-over-diors-jadore-fragrance-bottle-added-to-precedential-cases-list-in-china/