"China Unicom's RedBerry brand not only incorporates people's
familiarity with the BlackBerry brand name, but it also fully
embodies the symbolic meanings of China Unicom's new red logo,"
said the company. It acknowledged that RIM's BlackBerry is the most
successful application of push email technology.
Peter Bullock, a partner with the Hong Kong office of Pinsent
Masons and a specialist in intellectual property matters, said that
the Canadian company's options are limited.
To have an obvious redress under Chinese trade mark laws,
Bullock explained that RIM would have to show that Chinese
consumers are being duped into believing that the RedBerry is
associated with RIM's BlackBerry.
"Onerous hurdles to RIM's entry to the China market mean that
their notoriety is very low at present," he said, "which again
hinders trade mark enforcement."
In the absence of trade mark infringement, RIM would need to
fall back on the less potent Anti-Unfair Competition Law. "This
provides a catch-all to allow a measure of redress in the event of
unfair marketing, sales or promotion," said Bullock.
"Unfortunately, it is a law distinctly lacking in teeth."
It is not known if RIM wants to attempt to block sales of the
RedBerry device or simply compete with it on the market. It plans
to start selling its BlackBerry service in China through China
Mobile (Hong Kong), the world's larges mobile phone operator by the
end of May.
David Wolf makes an interesting point on The China Stock Blog
about keyboards. The BlackBerry accommodates a full QWERTY
keyboard; but with an enormous range of characters in Chinese
scripts, pen-based input devices have dominated the Chinese PDA
market to date. A QWERTY keyboard can be used for Chinese character
input – but that becomes much more difficult when limited to using
only one's thumbs.
