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domestic companies you saw earlier have been recognized for trademark rights in China, but there are many cases where someone has already registered their trademarks in China without the company even knowing.

If the company does not know it and tries to enter China, then it will approach and ask for money.



Reporter Hong Young-jae reported on how to respond to this situation.



<Reporter> In



China, there are even trademarks trading sites.



By far the most popular are trademarks of Korean companies.



Since 2014, our company has been the target of Chinese trademark hunters in earnest.



As the popularity of domestic dramas such as'My Love from the Star' soared in China, brokers who hunt for trademarks registered trademarks of domestic cosmetics companies and restaurants.



If you later try to enter China, you will be asked for money as a condition to hand over the trademark. 



[Jongki Lee/Patent Attorney: In the case of an unknown company, it will be several million won or tens of millions of won, but if it is a company that is even a little known, this will be in billions.]



These trademark brokers even form corporations and work systematically.



There are more than 360 such corporations in China, and there are over 4,000 domestic corporate trademarks that have been stolen without permission.



China also came up with a countermeasure in 2019 as it became an international problem with the tyranny of trademark brokers suffering from global companies.



The trademark law was revised to prevent malicious filing of trademarks that would not be used.



However, once a trademark is registered with a Chinese patent agency, the problem remains that the stolen company must directly prove the damage.



[Kwon Young-so/Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency Team Leader: There are so many dispute issues, so if you want SMEs to investigate all of them, you need a lot of manpower and expenses.] The Korean



Intellectual Property Office jointly responds with the victims and supports legal disputes up to KRW 40 million. .



Companies should check the status of trademark applications in China from time to time and actively collect evidence if they are suspected of being stolen.



(Video coverage: Namnam Kim·Hyuncheol Yang, Editing video: Junhee Kim, CG: Hyunjung Jung· Jiwon Choi· Sungbeom Jang) 



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