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Futabasha Loses Appeal on Chinese Shin-chan Trademark (Updated)

The Japanese publisher Futabasha announced on Tuesday that it lost one of two intellectual property cases in China over Yoshito Usui's Crayon Shin-chan manga character, while the other case appears to be faring badly for Futabasha as well. The issue arose in 2004 when Futabasha sold Crayon Shin-chan goods in China and was sued by a local company for trademark infringement. To Futabasha's surprise, numerous Chinese companies have been acquiring the trademark registrations for Crayon Shin-chan since 1996. (Utsui first published the original manga in Japan in 1990. Pictured at right is a depiction of the Chinese Shin-chan.) Futabasha sued to cancel those trademark registrations and lost. It then appealed the case to China's highest court, who let the earlier ruling stand.

Futabasha is in a second, separate case over copyright infringement on the Crayon Shin-chan character. Two courts rejected the case, but Futabasha appealed to China's highest court, and the case reverted back to the second court for a trial. That copyright case is still active.

Souce: Comic Natalie

Update: The image above from Futabasha's announcement is based on Tong Li's Traditional Chinese logo for the manga in Taiwan. The separate Simplified Chinese logo used in mainland China is pictured at left. (Mainland China uses Simplified Chinese by official government mandate.) The Shanghai company that registered Shin-chan's trademark in mainland China registered the trademark in both languages. Thanks, dormcat.