OpenPnp trademark in China

[listff]

Openpnp is registered as a trademark in China,

this is his youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0HdFo97MsES_ZxW6iCv4Rw/videos
his website https://www.openpnp.cn/

https://www.openpnp.cn/archives/3030
On this page you can see that his company name is 河北擎展智能科技有限公司

This is the company that squatted the openpnp trade name

Trademark Search Website wcjs.sbj.cnipa.gov.cn

[vonnieda]

Thank you for this @listff.

[listff]

He has a history of many patent infringements, he manufactures feeder imitations of feederfinger patents and applies for patents in China @vonnieda

[listff]

Hi vonnieda, is there any progress in protecting the openpnp trademark? @vonnieda

[4044ever]

Once you have Chinese trademark squatter that is basically it. From what I know, it's gone forever.
Actually I was planning to get something from Alan0131, now I reconsider.

[Alan-0131]

大家好我是Alan。我来自中国河北省。 2020年6月我做了第一台兼容openpnp的自动贴片机。从那时起，我就知道这是一个非常有前途的项目，也是一个伟大的项目。 于是我成立了公司，建了网站，设计生产贴片机。 经过两年多的时间，我们总结了自己的不足，取得了一定的成绩。 不久前，我们正式推出了第二代产品。

在中国，我申请注册了openpnp的商标。总共4类，分别是9、42、7、35类

我在这里声明一下有关商标的事宜。
1、在中国我是第一个制作基于openpnp的贴片机并用于商业的。但是从始至终没有使用openpnp作为商标。
2、在中国我注册了openpnp商标，那是因为很多开源项目在中国都被抢注了。例如openMV ，VORON等，并且他们都是因为抢注商标获取了丰厚的利润，为了保护openpnp不会变成被商业所利用的工具，我申请了openpnp商标，并在中国合法取得了正式的商标使用权。这是为了防止有人恶意注册来影响openpnp的发展。
3、截止目前，我没有向任何个人或企业提出诉讼或者维权。在中国的淘宝网站上搜索openpnp，会有很多商品在出售。
4、为了打消大家的疑虑，我愿意将openpnp的商标使用权无偿转让给openpnp的作者和团队，以此来证明我的诚意！
衷心的希望openpnp发展的越来越好！
Alan

Hi, I'm Alan. I am from Hebei Province, China. In June 2020, I made the first openpnp-compatible automatic placement machine. From then on, I knew it was a very promising project and a great one. So I set up a company, built a website, and designed and produced placement machines. After more than two years, we summed up our own shortcomings and achieved certain results. Not long ago, we officially launched the second generation of products.

In China, I applied to register the trademark of openpnp. A total of 4 categories, namely 9, 42, 7, 35 categories

I'm here to make a statement about the trademark.

1. In China, I was the first to make an openpnp-based placement machine and use it commercially. But openpnp was not used as a trademark from beginning to end.
2. I registered the openpnp trademark in China, because many open source projects have been squatted in China. For example, openMV, VORON, etc., and they all gained huge profits because of trademark squatting. In order to protect openpnp from becoming a tool used by businesses, I applied for the openpnp trademark and legally obtained the official trademark use in China right. This is to prevent malicious registration to affect the development of openpnp.
3. So far, I have not filed a lawsuit or defended my rights against any individual or company. Search openpnp on China's Taobao site, there will be a lot of items for sale.
4. In order to dispel everyone's doubts, I am willing to transfer the right to use the openpnp trademark to the author and team of openpnp free of charge to prove my sincerity!
   I sincerely hope that openpnp will develop better and better!
   Alan

This statement is translated by Google, everything is subject to Chinese meaning!

[vonnieda]

Hi everyone,

Alan reached out to me privately, and I have not had time to respond. This is the busiest part of the year for my day job and I just don't have much left in the tank right now for complicated multi-national legal issues. But, it's not fair to leave this hanging, so let's get it sorted.

First, @Alan-0131 thank you for your email and my apologies for not responding sooner. Congratulations on your success!

I appreciate your willingness to transfer the trademark, but I am not interested in taking it on. In simple terms: I would prefer you release the trademark back to the public, and cancel the registration of the domain name. Alternately, you could redirect openpnp.cn to openpnp.org.

I do not think that OpenPnP needs trademark protection in China. People have been using OpenPnP in business in China for many years. See Robotdigg's OpenPnP store on their site, and on Aliexpress. And, as you mentioned, many products using the OpenPnP name on Taobao and Alibaba.

People and businesses are free to use the OpenPnP name and logo to market compatible products, e.g. "Works with OpenPnP" but people should not name their product such that it seems like an official OpenPnP product.

To be clear, this is good: "Works with OpenPnP", "Designed for OpenPnP", "OpenPnP Compatible"

But this is not: "OpenPnP Feeder", "OpenPnP Machine", "OpenPnP Placer"

I realize the distinction may be less clear in other languages, and I welcome a discussion on this.

Alan, I also want to thank you for your generous donation of $1000 to my Github sponsors page. Since I am not currently putting a lot of work into OpenPnP, and my server costs are covered by existing donations, I think it would be best to give that money to the community in some way.

I propose to start a simple bug bounty by offering $250 each for a merged PR for top voted issues. I'm open to suggestions or alternatives.

Alan, I appreciate your enthusiasm and diligence, and I wish you continued success in your business. I celebrate every time someone is able to find success using OpenPnP. Let's all work together to make sure that OpenPnP is always open and free for everyone!

Thanks,
Jason

[Alan-0131]

Hello everyone,
First of all, thank you jason for your reply, and thank you for congratulating me.

Regarding the trademark, I agree with jason that we should allow everyone to use it freely and reasonably. After receiving your reply, I will act immediately. I wanted to cancel this trademark so as not to cause trouble for myself, but someone offered ¥100,000RMB to acquire this trademark before, so I contacted the relevant legal team such as the China Trademark and Patent Department. The answer they gave me was that if I gave up my trademark right, it would be registered by others immediately, and the consequences would be immeasurable. So I don't know how to handle this. Please tell me what should I do? Or I will publicly issue a statement here. Anyone in China can use the openpnp trademark, and I and the company will not pursue any legal responsibility. And affix the official seal of our company. I also accept other opinions.

For the domain name of openpnp.cn, I have already made a decision. This is an announcement from my website.

Regarding the donation, since I am not familiar with the openpnp organization, I fully support the reward method you proposed.

Thanks to the Jason team for giving us such a good project, so I sincerely hope that more people can know and use openpnp. Although my ability is limited, I still hope to do my best. I wish openpnp better and better again.
thanks
alan

大家好，
首先感谢jason的回复，同时感谢你对我祝贺。

关于商标的事，我同意jason的说法，我们应该让每个人都可以免费并合理的使用，当收到您的回复后，我立刻行动。我本想注销这个商标以免给我自己带来麻烦，但是之前曾有人出价10万元人民币想要收购此商标，为此我联系了中国商标专利部门等相关法律团队。他们给我的答复是如果我放弃了商标权，会立刻被其他人所注册，产生的后果将无法估量。所以我也不知道将如何处理此事。请告诉我应该怎么办？或者我就在这里公开发表一份声明在中国任何人都可以使用openpnp商标，我本人及公司不会追究任何法律责任。并加盖我公司公章。同时我也接受其他的意见。

对于openpnp.cn的域名，我已经做出了决定。这是我网站的公告。

关于捐赠，因为我对openpnp组织还不熟悉，所以对于您提出的奖励方式，我完全支持。

感谢Jason团队给了我们一个这么好的项目，所以我衷心希望更多人可以知道并使用openpnp，虽然本人能力有限，但我还是希望可以尽我所能。再次祝愿openpnp越来越好。

[vonnieda]

Thank you Alan. Your statement above is enough for me. I consider this matter resolved and I thank you for your kindness and passion for OpenPnP.

Please let me know your new domain name when you decide - I will add it to https://openpnp.org/hardware/ under whichever category you prefer.

In addition, I'll note that I'm currently rewriting the openpnp.org site to be Markdown based so that it can be more easily managed in the Github repo. When that is finished, perhaps we could work on translating it to Chinese, and other languages. Then openpnp.cn could point to the Chinese version.

[Alan-0131]

Thanks jason, this is a big surprise.

I will orient the domain name according to your requirements.

thank！
alan

[vonnieda]

Hi @Alan-0131, http://openpnp.cn should work with the OpenPnP site now. https://openpnp.cn is giving a security error currently - I'm working with the host to find out why.

Please let me know if you have a new domain name you'd like me to add to the Hardware page.

[vonnieda]

Note: I changed the title from Openpnp trademark squatted to better reflect the positive outcome :)

[Alan-0131]

thanks a lot jason
Yes, openpnp.cn can be accessed normally, and I will fully cooperate in the follow-up work related to domain names and Chinese culture
Thank you for your help in giving me the link, my new domain name is www.alan0131.com
Thank you, I will fully cooperate with you, and hope that more people can experience the charm of openpnp! Hope openpnp is getting stronger and stronger!

[vonnieda]

Hi Alan, can you give me an English and/or Chinese description of how you would like the link to appear on https://openpnp.org/hardware/?

Here is a template:

http://www.alan0131.com/ sells OpenPnP compatible hardware in China, and provides a community resource for Chinese OpenPnP users

Just write it exactly as you'd like it to appear on the site.

I'm going to start working on posting the bug bounties today - so look for an announcement on that soon.

Thanks,
Jason