Recently, the Beijing Higher Court announced the administrative judgment of the second instance of China National Intellectual Property Administration and Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. After trial, the Beijing Higher Court affirmed that the registration of the trademark "Honor of Kings" in dispute violated the provision "damaging the existing prior rights of others" prescribed in Article 32 of the Trademark Law of 2014, hence, so the court supported Tencent's relevant claims. 

(image source: official website of Honor of Kings)

Recently, the Beijing Higher Court announced the administrative judgment of the second instance of China National Intellectual Property Administration and Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. After trial, the Beijing Higher Court affirmed that the registration of the trademark "Honor of Kings" in dispute violated the provision "damaging the existing prior rights of others" prescribed in Article 32 of the Trademark Law of 2014, hence, so the court supported Tencent's relevant claims. 

On June 19, 2018, Tencent requested the CNIPA to invalidate the trademark "Honor of Kings" registered by Guizhou Wenqu Chengyu Wine Co., Ltd. on the ground that it infringed Tencent's prior copyright of the trademark "Honor of Kings". However, the request was rejected by the CNIPA.

Dissatisfied with the above ruling, Tencent filed an administrative lawsuit with Beijing Intellectual Property Court, and Guizhou Wenqu Chengyu Wine Industry participated the lawsuit as the third party.

Tencent pointed out that the game "Honor of Kings" had become the top game of App Store since it was launched in October 2015 and had drawn wide-spread attention. Tencent also promoted the game through its own platform such as WeChat and QQ and gained a large user base. In addition, Tencent had put great effort in development and cooperation in beverages, catering and other fields for the game, such as launching packages in cooperation with McDonald's and Sprite beverages in cooperation with Coca-Cola Company.

Tencent deemed that Guizhou Wenqu Chengyu Wine Co., Ltd. registered "Honor of King" as a trademark, which may easily cause the relevant public to mistakenly believe that it has been approved by Tencent or has a specific connection with Tencent. This behavior damaged Tencent's prior right to the work name of the game "Honor of Kings" and violated the relevant provisions of the Trademark Law.  It is considered that Guizhou Wenqu Chengyu Wine Industry has  obvious malice to register words related to "Honor of King", and has the intention of rushing to register trademarks and seeking illegitimate commercial interests. 

The Beijing Intellectual Property Court affirmed that the registration of the disputed trademark damaged the prior rights and interests of the game "Honor of Kings", and decided to revoke the sued ruling and ordered the defendant CNIPA to make a new ruling. 

The CNIPA refused to accept the first-instance judgment and appealed to the Beijing Higher Court. 

After trial, the Beijing Higher Court held that Tencent's "Honor of Kings" could be protected as the prior rights and interests of the name of the work. Guizhou Wenqu Chengyu Wine Industry must have borrowed the market reputation formed by the name of the previous work "Honor of Kings" or improperly damaged its commercial interests when selling the goods approved for use by the disputed trademark "Honor of Kings". The final judgment rejected the appeal and upheld the original judgment.