CO129-345 - Public Offices & Foreign Office - 1907 — Page 218

(This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.}_

CHINA TRADE.

CONFIDENTIAL.

[29081]

No. 1.

[September 12.]

SECTION 2.

Foreign Office to China Association.

(Confidential.) Sir,

Foreign Office, September 12, 1907. ON the 2nd ultimo a letter was addressed to you from this Office relative to the proposed Agreement with Japan for the mutual protection of British and Japanese trade-marks in China.

I am directed by Secretary Sir E. Grey to inform you that in May last His Majesty's Chargé d'Affaires was instructed to approach the Japanese Government with a view to the conclusion of such an Agreement. A further despatch has now been addressed to Sir C. MacDonald, with reference to the last paragraph of your letter of the 25th July last, inquiring how the matter now stands, and asking whether the negotiations are progressing satisfactorily.

I am to add that it cannot be too strongly emphasized that every mark likely to be used in the future, either in Japan or China, should be registered at once at the Japanese Patent Office, failing which no action in a Japanese Court, whether in Japan or China, is likely to be successful, and that in cases where British unregistered marks have been pirated and registered by Japanese in Japan, steps should at once be taken with a view, if possible, to preventing the Japanese registration becoming final.

I am, &c. (Signed) F. A. CAMPBELL.

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