England's Premier League yesterday got the better of a Chinese rival in a trademark dispute over the football league's crowned lion logo.

In a verdict announced yesterday, the Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court upheld an earlier decision by China's trademark watchdog that a Chinese sporting events company should stop using its logo because it was too similar to that of the Premier League.

Xiangshi Celebration Service Company in Xuzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province, had registered a lion image as its trademark in 1999. The lion closely resembled that used by the Premier League, except that the Xiangshi lion had no football under its right paw.

When the English Football Association entered the Chinese market by setting up a company here in 2000, the British football authority sought to register the Premier League's logo, a crowned lion, with the Trademark Review and Appraisal Board (TRAB), under the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

The board initially rejected the application because of its similarity to the Xiangshi lion.

The English Football Association appealed the board's decision in 2001, on the grounds that the Xiangshi lion imitated the league's lion. The board accepted the claim and revoked Xiangshi's lion logo last year.

TRAB officials said the Premier League lion was unique and was protected by the Copyright Law.

They also said that because the Premier League logo had been broadcast in China via television for many years, Xiangshi might have seen the lion before it registered its logo.

Xiangshi sued the TRAB and the English Football Association, claiming that its logo was different from the football league's logo and that the company had developed the logo itself.

Xiangshi also claimed the English Football Association could not provide any evidence that the Premier League logo had been seen anywhere in China before 1999.

No representatives or lawyers of Xiangshi were present at yesterday's ruling and could not be reached for comment before the press time.

Su Xiaonan, lawyer for the English Football Association, welcomed the verdict.

"The Chinese Government has done much to protect the IPR (intellectual property rights) of foreign firms operating in the country in recent years," said Su after the ruling.

The English Football Association was not the only foreign company to have an IPR dispute settled yesterday. The court also ruled in 16 other IPR cases involving foreign firms. The foreign companies involved won every case.

The cases covered disputes between the US-based maker of Viagra and a Chinese competitor, and overseas film-making giants and pirated DVD producers in China.

Su Chi, the court's vice-dean and the person in charge of all the cases decided yesterday, said IPR cases involving overseas companies had grown increasingly common in recent years.

"Between 2002 and 2006, the court ruled in 670 IPR cases involving overseas firms, about 31.8 per cent of the total number of IPR cases. Foreign companies won 60 per cent of these cases," said Su.

Su added that the increasing frequency of IPR cases posed a challenge to judges because the cases cover a wide range of industries.

(China Daily 12/28/2006 page3)