Recently, mainland Chinese businesses have launched a parody car sticker called “SF Express Pregnancy,” which has been deemed as trademark infringement by a Guangzhou court, sentencing the business to compensate SF Express company with 200,000 RMB.
According to reports from Chinese media on February 5th, Shenzhen SF Tyson Holdings (Group) Co., Ltd. (referred to as “SF Express company”) recently discovered that the company Shop Xiaer was selling “SF Express Pregnancy” car stickers on a certain online shopping platform, which closely resembled SF Express company’s registered trademark.
Many netizens from various regions have also posted on social media saying that the “SF Express Pregnancy” parody car sticker “treating pregnancy as a ‘delivery package’ is both vulgar and disrespectful to women” and “easily mistaken for an official SF Express action, damaging the brand’s professional image.”
In response, SF Express company brought Shop Xiaer to court. Recently, the Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court ruled in the first instance judgement that “SF Express” is a famous trademark, and the defendant’s sale of “SF Express Pregnancy” car stickers tarnished the brand’s reputation, constituting trademark infringement.
The court stated that the car sticker in question closely resembled the core elements of the famous trademark, with the pronunciation of “pregnancy” and “express” being similar, and both sharing the letters “SF” and the English word “EXPRESS” in their logos, which easily leads the public to associate and link them, disrupting the inherent corresponding relationship between the famous trademark and express services and directly weakening the distinctiveness of the trademark in distinguishing goods or service sources.
By phonetically connecting “pregnancy” and a logistics brand, the car sticker disregards women’s pregnancy experiences, creating a vulgar atmosphere in public spaces, violating social norms, undermining the reputation of SF Express, and meeting the criteria for trademark infringement.
Ultimately, the court ordered the defendant Shop Xiaer to compensate SF Express company for economic losses and other expenses totaling 200,000 RMB, and publish a statement in the media to eliminate the impact. The verdict is now in effect.