International Law

Rolls-Royce Knockoff Makes Splash at Shanghai Auto Show

By Stan

I’m not really a car guy, so this story would have sailed right by me if not for the IP angle. You be the judge whether the term “knockoff” applies in this case (h/t CDT):

1. The real deal, a Rolls:

2. The alleged knockoff, the Geely GE (great name, that):

To my untrained eye, I see two black boxy-looking things with the same sort of grille and round headlights. Experts probably could point to a bunch of other items that are the same. Sorry about that — cars generally bore the crap out of me.

According to the Mail, there is some protected IP at issue here:

The grille, the Flying Lady mascot, also known as the Spirit of Ecstasy, and the Rolls-Royce name and initials are specifically protected.

Quick aside. ‘Spirit of Ecstasy’??? You’ve really got to be kidding.

OK, back to the topic at hand. The Mail article omits a couple of very important facts: how are these things protected, and in what jurisdiction? I assume this Flying Lady thing (the Mail article contains closeups) is copyrighted, so we can leave that aside for the moment. As to the grille and the RR name, the latter is a trademark, but the former is what? Design patent? If so, it would have expired many years ago.

As far as the trademark is concerned, I don’t see any mention of trademark infringement anywhere, and I do not see the RR mark anywhere on the GE. Unless I’m missing something, we are not talking about trademark.

So what do we have left? Perhaps some sort of unfair competition based on trade dress (basically the general look/feel of the product)? Pretty weak case. Without a trademark, copyright or patent infringement to anchor an unfair competition claim, making such a case is very tough stuff without additional evidence of bad faith or misleading the public.

Is Geely trying to mislead anyone into thinking they are buying a Rolls? Not bloody likely:

With its £250,000 price-tag, the original Rolls-Royce Phantom has always been the preserve of the privileged few.

But costing just £30,000, the GE, which stands for Geely Excellence, appears to offer a ?luxurious mobile palace? on a much tighter budget.

You’d have to be pretty stupid to mistake the GE for a Rolls at that price. Then again (IMHO), you’d have to be pretty stupid to shell out 250K pounds for a Rolls, even if it does come with “starlight interior roof lining” — always a must for the man about town.

Even the New York Times was having a tough time squaring the similarities with the fact that this was obviously not a Rolls:

By all accounts the limo is a shameless (if not slightly shorter in length) knock-off of the Rolls-Royce Phantom and might look more at home parked on Canal Street in Manhattan?s Chinatown.

Now, I should point out that a fake product can infringe IP even if everyone knows it’s a copy. For example, if you find a copy of the new Wolverine movie offered for sale by an unshaven old lady from a horse-drawn cart in the suburbs of Beijing, it’s definitely not a legal copy, and everyone knows it. No fooling the public going on there. On the other hand, that is still IP infringement.

Why is this important? If there is no infringement of (China) registered IP, or a copyright, then Rolls-Royce is going to have a difficult case to make based on unfair competition.

Let’s wait and see what the in-house guys come up with at RR.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us

Full post as published by China Hearsay on April 23, 2009 (boomark / email).