Blue Whale Auto reporter learned from Tianyancha that within the month, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huawei") applied for registration of pharmaceutical products and daily chemical products.AITO trademarks and other categories, goods/services include massage equipment, wearable medical biometric data monitor, electric massage gun, cleaning agent for automobile, wax for automobile, etc.
Although there are no projects directly related to vehicle production, Huawei’s move has once again triggered a heated discussion on its "car-making action".
At the 100,000th off-line ceremony of AITO on May 27th, Yu Chengdong, managing director of Huawei, CEO of BG and CEO of BU, a smart car solution, once again responded to the question "Does Huawei make cars?" Everyone said that Huawei doesn’t make cars, but the accurate explanation is that Huawei doesn’t make cars alone. How can we do it without making cars? How can you survive without building a car? You must build a car! However, Huawei does not build cars alone, but builds cars with car companies, builds good cars and builds the best cars. "
From the name change storm of "HUAWEI asking the world" in March to the subsequent statement of "not building cars alone", the relationship between Huawei and AITO asking the world has attracted more and more attention. In the process of building AITO asking the world brand in cooperation with Huawei,Has the role changed?
Huawei recently registered several AITO trademarks.
The reporter inquired from Tianyancha and China Trademark Network that as early as December 2021, before the release of the AITO brand, a company named Zhengde Electronics Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Zhengde Electronics) took the lead in applying for registration of multi-category AITO trademarks, among which the most important 12 categories of trademarks covered vehicles, land, air and sea carriers (but because the tire group trademark was applied by other companies, Zhengde Electronics did not apply for production at that time) The company was founded on March 2, 2021, as if to apply for a trademark.
Subsequently, Zhengde Electronics successively transferred 12 kinds of AITO trademarks to Chongqing Haokang Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Chongqing Haokang) and 7 kinds and 9 kinds of trademarks to Beijing Ruide Kaizhuo Trade Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Ruide Kaizhuo), whose goods/services covered exchange development.Air filters for automobile engines, automobile oil pumps, interactive touch-screen terminals, navigation instruments for vehicles (onboard computers), automobile audio equipment, car televisions, etc. On July 5 and December 9, 2022, Zhengde Electronics applied for 12 categories of AITO trademark groups of tires twice, and it is still waiting for substantive examination.
According to Tianyancha, Chongqing Haokang is an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Chongqing Xiaokang Holdings Co., Ltd., and the actual controller is Zhang Xinghai, the chairman of the group; Zhengde Electronics and Ruide Kaizhuo have no more information at present. However, as the agency of the above-mentioned trademarks is Huajin United Patent and Trademark Agency Co., Ltd., the agency of Huawei’s HarmonyOS trademark, some insiders speculate that it is Huawei behind Zhengde Electronics and Ruide Kaizhuo, but there is still no information to prove the relevance of the three.
In order to better protect their trademark rights, trademark holders generally avoid trademark infringement through cross-category registration, approximate registration and sub-brand registration. However, compared with the frequent actions of Zhengde Electronics and Ruide Kaizhuo, Chongqing Haokang is not active in the process of protecting trademarks. Only four pieces of registration information of AITO trademarks can be found on China Trademark Network, while Zhengde Electronics and Ruide Kaizhuo have 25 pieces and 273 pieces of registration information respectively.
Since March, 2022, AITO brand has successively launched three models, namely, the M5, M7 and M5 EV, with the words "the model of the car" printed on the back of the car body. Correspondingly, the trademark of Wenjie currently belongs to Beijing Yongan Shida Science and Trade Co., Ltd., which has had many trademark transfer businesses with Huawei-related enterprises.
Image source: screenshot of China Trademark Network
The reporter also noticed that during the month, Huawei also applied for dozens of 12 kinds of trademarks, including Lanjie, Tongjie, Tengjie, Xuanjie, HarmonyOS Jiejie, Kunlin and Lunyu.
In short, 12 categories of AITO trademarks belong to Huawei, and Huawei is actively acquiring other categories of AITO trademarks.
How to define the right to use a trademark under the ecological environment?
On March 8 this year, AITO Automobile used the words "HUAWEI asks the world" on its social media platform for the first time, which gained great attention from both inside and outside the industry.
"Huawei provides core software and hardware technologies such as electrification and intelligent parts, and helps car companies sell good cars through product definition, user experience, quality control, channel retail and brand marketing, helping car companies achieve commercial success while driving Huawei intelligence.Large-scale sales. Although HUAWEI replied that "Huawei asks the world" is a brand of Huawei eco-car and a brand-new business model initiated by Huawei, it has not stopped speculation about "Huawei makes cars".
On March 31st, Huawei announced the auto business decision signed by Ren Zhengfei himself.The announcement puts strict requirements on the body logo, emphasizing that Huawei /HUAWEI cannot be used in vehicle publicity. At the financial report conference held on the same day, Huawei once again responded that in order to avoid being misunderstood by the outside world as "Huawei makes cars", today Huawei internally issued the "Resolution on Huawei not making cars". The business model and cooperation strategy of the eco-car will not change. Xu Zhijun, Huawei’s rotating chairman, said that it is strictly forbidden for Huawei brands to appear in front of any automobile brands, and materials in flagship stores and retail stores will be cleaned up.
At present, there are three main modes of cooperation between Huawei and car companies: one is the component mode of selling standardized products; The second is the Huawei Inside mode (referred to as "HI mode") that provides full-stack smart car solutions; Third, deeply participate in product and vehicle design, and provide intelligent selection mode of sales network channels.
At the high-level forum of China Electric Vehicle committee of 100 Forum (2023) held on April 1, Yu Chengdong once said that the current series of models of the world are produced by Cyrus, and Chery, BAIC and JAC will also produce Huawei’s complete solution models soon. "If they all adopt different brands, it will be very troublesome to separate retail marketing, so it is necessary to implement the ecological alliance of the world."
He further explained that in the future, there will be no conflict between the models launched by several partners under the intelligent selection mode, and they will still work together to build an ecological alliance, make full use of the production capacity resources of the car factory and jointly build competitiveness.
In response to the question of trademark use rights in the world, Xia Hailong, a lawyer from Shanghai Shenlun Law Firm, told the Blue Whale Automobile reporter that there are generally two types of changes in trademark use rights. One kind is transfer, for example, the trademark of A is completely transferred to B, and then the trademark will be held by B, and A can’t use it. There is also authorization, which is a very extensive way. For example, A authorizes B to use this trademark in certain regions, certain commodities and within a certain period of time. Under the authorization mode, A can still use its own trademark, and A can also authorize multiple subjects such as BCD to use it at the same time.
"As long as Huawei has obtained the trademark right or the right to use it, it can use the trademark within the scope of trademark registration or authorization." Lawyer Xia Hailong said.