On the afternoon of October 17, 2015, the 2015 China Trademark Festival (hereinafter referred to as “the Trademark Festival”), sponsored by China Trademark Association, ceremoniously kicked off in the coastal city of Haikou. Nearly 1,000 officials and representatives from the industry and other famous businesses attended the trademark festival, including Zhou Tienong, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People's Congress; Liu Junchen, Vice Director of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC); Liu Fan, President of China Trademark Association; Sun Xinyang, member of the Standing Committee of the Provincial Party Committee of Hainan Province and Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee of Haikou City; Li Guoliang, Deputy Governor of Hainan Province; Chen Kai, Director of the Industrial & Commercial Administration Bureau of Hainan Province; Ni Qiang, Mayor of the Municipal Government of Haikou City; David Muls, Senior Director of the Madrid Registry at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO); officials, representatives, and experts from relevant Chinese ministries and some national and regional trademark authorities in China and from famous businesses.

As the trademark event with the highest size, the largest scale and the most influence, the theme of this Trademark Festival is to “implement the trademark strategy, and develop brand economy”. And it is composed of 2015 China Trademark Annual Meeting, China Brand Expo and a series of theme activities, with rich content and lively and varied form.

The main forum of this year's Trademark Festival, as one of its most components, was also the 2nd China Brand Economy Summit Forum, which revolved around the theme of "Credibility, Innovation, Rule by Law." In fact, innovation as a theme attracted a great deal of attention at this festival. In addition to the attention paid to it at the main forum, innovation as a driving force behind growth also became something to focus on the other forums. Intellectual property (or “IP” for short) services are an important part of the modern service industry, and their ability to support scientific and technological innovation, industry upgrades, foreign trade, and cultural development is becoming increasingly evident. As a result, IP Service Innovation and Standard System Construction Forum were created at this Trademark Festival.

Wu Yangyi, Operating President of China Region for Chinese Operations at ".SHANGBIAO" Domain Registry (hereinafter referred to as the Domain Registry), was invited to the meeting to deliver a keynote speech. President Wu pointed out that during the two sessions this year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang put forward in the government work report to “formulate 'Internet Plus' action plan, promote the mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data and Internet of Things, etc. to combine with modern manufacturing, and enhance the healthy development of electronic commerce, industry Internet and Internet finance.” At present, China’s manufacturing industry is lack of independent innovation capacity. In the course of industrial upgrade from “Made in China” to “Created in China” advocated by the government, to conduct independent R&D and innovation, enterprises will inevitably be involved in the brand creation and operation. Although the quantity of China’s trademark registration applications has been topping the world for consecutive years, the quality level of independent brands is not high, and China is far from a brand giant. The emergence of Brand “.SHANGBIAO” could help more brand enterprises to effectively protect and increase the brand awareness and influence of enterprises in the industry upgrading.

In the IP field, ".SHANGBIAO," which combines the "Internet domain name plus intellectual property trademark”, represents not only the latest trend in the way trademarks are identified in the Internet age, but also the latest way of expressing trademarks in the "Internet Plus" era. The double identification and marking capacity of trademarks and domain names let the online “.SHANGBIAO” bear the basic function like the conventional trademarks which can differentiate the information sources of commodities and services or related specific individuals, enterprises or organizations to facilitate the identification of other persons and consumers. This innovative feature makes it easier for both netizens and consumers to facilitate online search, identification and distinguishing of various sources of commodities and services, reduce confusion and annoyance in the recognition and use of trademarks due to inconsistent online and offline trademark names, thus decreasing the loss resulting from purchasing the counterfeit commodities and service or wrongly entering the phishing websites. In the meantime, the trademark rights holders also hope that their trademark rights can be extended, expanded and protected on the Internet, and their trademarks can be represented, managed, used and promoted online and offline consistently so as to prevent their trademarks from being counterfeited, fraudulently copied or infringed on the Internet and safeguard their Internet business interests.

At present, some of China's applications and services have ranked among the best in the world on the Internet, and as an innovative indispensable online trademark sign representing corporate brand reputation in the Internet information age, Brand “.SHANGBIAO” plays a positive role in cooperating with the government authorities to promote Internet governance and online fraud, enhancing network security and safeguarding consumers' rights and interests, and will make due contributions to building a good faith society and creating a credible, healthy and sustainable ecological environment of the Internet.

The forum also invited a host of experts from government agencies and businesses like the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry & Commerce, Baidu, Tencent, and Evergrande Group to share their views on the topic of "innovative IP services" with the audience, including the Domain Registry, and the experts also exchanged views and engaged in discussions with them.

Moreover, the Chinese Brand Exposition was also held during the Trademark Festival, and the Domain Registry set up a special exhibition stand manned by a team of a dozen employees in Hall C of the exhibition center. In fact, the Domain Registry's stand attracted a number of officials from China Trademark Association, including Wang Peizhang Secretary General of China Trademark Association, as well as many representatives from a large number of brand customers and IP service providers. Because the Domain Registry has kept on popularizing its services in 2015, many figures from the trademark IP community have become gradually acquainted with ".SHANGBIAO" as a new top level domain, though most of them have not fully realized the value and significance of ".SHANGBIAO". To solve this problem, the Domain Registry's delegation to the festival spent time and energy explaining to the large numbers of visitors that not only does ".SHANGBIAO" provide registration services for global trademark rights holders, but the register rules stipulate that the registration and use of a domain name in the ".SHANGBIAO" domain correspond completely with the rights of the registrant to the trademark in question, that the registration phrase be chosen according to information provided in the trademark registration certificate or the trademark application document, and that the Domain Registry task a team of professional auditors with verifying information about the domain name registrant and the registration phrase. The visitors approved of the value of the domain registry after the explanation. And the visitors showed a great interest in ".SHANGBIAO" upon learning that the Domain Registry had taken measures to ensure that it could help both consumers and users distinguish different commodities and services by studying information posted online about them and so reduce the possibility of infringements of the rights to trademarks as intellectual property. And it was made clear to them that ".SHANGBIAO" also helped reduce the confusion caused by failure to use a single trademark online and offline as well as the possibility of the consumer being tricked into buying counterfeit products due to inability to distinguish between true and false brand information, and as a result, ".SHANGBIAO" may protect the interests of individuals, businessmen, enterprises, producers and organizations in their brands and trademarks.

As a colorful trademark-centric gathering for both people at home and abroad, the Trademark Festival attracted a great number of foreign visitors, including officials from the British embassy in Beijing, the South Korean embassy in Beijing, the Trademark Branch of Korean Intellectual Property Office, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office; and representatives from foreign associations in the trademark IP community like the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the International Trademark Association (ITO), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Japan Patent Attorneys Association. In fact, the Trademark Festival attracted a great deal of attention from domestic and foreign trademark IP communities, and over 1,000 people, a record high, attended the event.