Chinese court rules BBC infringed in trademark lawsuit

BEIJING -- A Chinese court has ruled in favor of British Broadcasting Corporation in a trademark infringement lawsuit that a Beijing firm made unauthorized use of the "BBC" logo.

The Haidian district people's court made the first instance sentence that the Beijing iYuba Tech Company should stop the infringement of the exclusive right to use the "BBC" trademark and compensate BBC for economic losses and reasonable expenses totaling 1 million yuan ($143,400).

BBC claimed that the trademark involves its enterprise name, which has high popularity in China. Without permission, the Beijing firm used the "BBC" logo prominently on its two company websites, a public account on Chinese social media WeChat, and five mobile phone applications developed by iYuba.

The Beijing tech firm is an English language learning application developer. BBC claimed that iYuba's use of the "BBC" logo makes the public mistakenly believe that the applications and services provided by iYuba are associated with BBC, causing confusion and constituting unfair competition.

The court heard that relevant logos used by iYuba, although slightly different in font and color with additional words such as "English," the overall visual effect is similar to that of the BBC trademark.