Tiffany and Pui-Ching

by

Pat Wong

Fellow Lighters:
 

If you have a few minutes to kill, let me tell you a story about Tiffany and Company, a renowned purveyor of quality jewelry and assorted luxury items. Hopefully, we can draw some inference on the parallelism between Tiffany’s and Pui-Ching’s predicament.

One sleepy morning, Tiffany woke up and found out that someone by the name of Janet White of Tampa, Florida, had registered with Network Solutions, Inc., the domain name: tiffanysgiftstore.com. Under this website, Janet had been offering for sale a variety of jewelry, including some in direct competition with Tiffany herself. Needless to say, the business was good for many customers were fooled into thinking the merchandize was the genuine Tiffany brand name! Some Lighters may think that Janet was really clever. Since she was successful and actually helped popularize the Tiffany name, she ought to be congratulated! Ha, but the Tiffany insiders were outraged; they sued. Other Lighters may think why bother? The name is not exactly the same and any litigation will just enrich the lawyers. But this time the lawyers earned their keep. The decision came down saying that though the domain name was not exactly the same, it created a likelihood of confusion with the true Tiffany brand, and that Janet White had registered and used the domain name for commercial gain and in bad faith. It further ordered that the said domain name be transferred to the plaintiff, the original Tiffany and Company.

I would like to point out one rather profound difference between the cases of Tiffany and that of Pui-Ching. It is that in the Tiffany case, the respondent, Janet White, was too ashamed to even show up in court to defend herself; in the Pui-Ching case, the feeling of shame was beyond the name stealers!

Granted that in China the judicial system is not as mature as that of the United States. But if we don’t fight in the hills, in the streets, the Pui-Ching name will not return to the rightful owner voluntarily. We must keep on fighting; we must never surrender! I was told that, in China, the law sometimes has a lot to do with whom you know. In one of our weekly Starbuck’s meetings, we came up with the idea to recruit some of our famous alumni: the well-know politicians, professors, Field prize and Nobel prize winners. Have them jointly write a petition to the higher ups in the Chinese government. This is not unprecedented if you recall the famous memo signed by many well-respected scientists, including Einstein, to the then President Roosevelt that started the Manhattan Project.

Last month, when I received the now famous questionnaire, I dutifully checked the boxes and mailed it back. It stuck me that the questions were rather biased and somewhat condescending; but, I understand that the true purpose of this questionnaire is not to solicit opinions about whether or not to sue but to rally the alumni for support. Little did I know that it would start this controversial debate. To me, this is such a black and white issue with hardly any gray area in between. It is difficult to empathize with the name stealers unless, of course, one has a hidden agenda.



p.s. I regret not to have read Peter Tong’s original article and Linda Tsang’s reply. Somehow the pdf attachments were stripped by the email servers. Perhaps Tony can put them on the Lighter’s website in the beloved Let Us Talk page.

Reference:

http://www.worldlii.org/int/cases/GENDND/2003/822.html