China Favors Knock-off Arita-yaki Porcelain Over Authentic Arita-yaki
Producers of Japan’s famous Arita-yaki porcelain recently discovered that a display of their products in Shanghai cannot use the Chinese characters for “Arita-yaki” because the characters have been registered as a trademark by a Chinese businessman:
According to the prefectural government, a Chinese individual who sells tableware applied to China’s Trademark Office in November 2002 and was awarded a 10-year registration in November 2004.
Arita learned of the registration when officials checked the Trademark Office’s Internet home page to prepare for an exhibition of Saga products to be held at a Shanghai department store starting in late September.
Because the Japanese side can’t use the characters — “you tian shao” — in pinyin reading, it will use other names, including five kanji reading “Made in Arita, Japan,” or “Arita-Ceramics-Japan” in Roman letters at the exhibition.
The town of Arita has been famous for porcelain-making for hundreds of years, and locals are obviously annoyed by the fact that the Chinese government won’t let them write the name of their product in Chinese. “Arita-yaki” can join a long list of Japanese product and place names that have been shamelessly registered as trademarks in China. In some cases, the names are already famous in China, but in this case few Chinese people seem to have heard of “Arita.” The owner of the trademark probably registered the characters hoping that he could profit from it if the name might eventually become famous in China.
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