Public order and morality in China's Trademark Law: a vague scrutiny based on political order and social morals

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-218
Author(s):  
Ling Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
General Public ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Trademark Law ◽  
Cultural Conflicts ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Trademark Registration

Under Article 10(1)(8) of China's Trademark Law, a trademark that is contrary to public order and accepted principles of morality is not only refused registration, but also forbidden to be used in commerce. Numerous cases involving the registrability of trademarks are brought to China's courts, and Article 10(1)(8) is one of the main grounds for refusing trademark registration. In general, there are two specific legal issues concerning the application of this provision. One is the legislative purpose and rational basis of this provision. In fact, China's Trademark Office and courts used this provision to block trademark hoarding and to protect the civil rights of others before the Supreme People's Court clarified that the purpose of this provision was to protect public interests. The other is the standard for determining what is offensive, which is a common problem among countries with a similar provision. Indeed, it is difficult to create a consistent standard because of the subjectivity involved in drawing moral conclusions, the cultural conflicts between different groups and the unpredictability of the perception of the general public. However, these problems could be solved if the examiners set a low moral threshold for trademark registration, as the perception of the general public with normal sensitivity and tolerance is easier to ascertain when a mark is deeply offensive. In addition, not all trademarks related to public authorities and serious social events should be forbidden under the morality provision, and the court should take account of the possibility of damaging political order and traders' freedom of expression.

scholarly journals Harmful Trademarks

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadiya Farah
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Anecdotal Evidence ◽  
Trademark Law ◽  
Islamic Countries ◽  
Trademark Registration ◽  
Gulf States ◽  
The Uk

Between 2013-2017, around 115 EU trademark applications were rejected on morality and public order grounds. In the GCC (six Arab and Islamic countries), anecdotal evidence suggests some refusals have bemused foreign applicants and highlighted cultural blindspots. In this context, this work examines how three Arab Gulf states that have Islamic law as the main source of legislation and large expatriate communities, apply moral bars to trademark registration. It draws comparison with Western jurisdictions. Three main questions are explored: 1) To what extent do immoral or borderline trademarks/goods proceed to registration in conservative Islamic countries that apply trademark law in conformity with Shari’a law? 2) What reasoning is guiding decisions? 3) Can a concept of ‘harm’ improve our understanding of the power of trademarks and thus the moral thresholds that countries set? The author is an innovation and IP commercialisation professional. She acquired a passion for trademark law while completing a Master of Laws in ‘Intellectual Property and Competition Law’ in Munich, Germany. She is now pursuing a career in trademark law in the UK.

The Cities on the Hill

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas K. Ogorzalek
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Invaluable Tool ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
The Hill ◽  
The New Deal

Recent electoral cycles have drawn attention to an urban–rural divide at the heart of American politics. This book traces the origins of red and blue America. The urbanicity divide began with the creation of an urban political order that united leaders from major cities and changed the Democratic Party during the New Deal era. These cities, despite being the site of serious, complex conflicts at home, are remarkably cohesive in national politics because members of city delegations represent their city as well as their district. Even though their constituents often don’t see eye-to-eye on important issues, members of these city delegations represent a united city position known as progressive liberalism. Using a wide range of congressional evidence and a unique dataset measuring the urbanicity of U.S. House districts over time, this book argues that city cohesion, an invaluable tool used by cities to address their urgent governance needs through higher levels of government, is fostered by local institutions developed to provide local political order. Crucially, these integrative institutions also helped foster the development of civil rights liberalism by linking constituencies that were not natural allies in support of group pluralism and racial equality. This in turn led to the departure from the coalition of the Southern Democrats, and to our contemporary political environment. The urban combination of diversity and liberalism—supported by institutions that make allies out of rivals—teaches us lessons for governing in a world increasingly characterized by deep social difference and political fragmentation.

Observations on Some Tribulations of Civility

1980 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 528-545
Author(s):  
Edward Shils
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public Authorities

THE INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS REQUIRED FOR THE freedom of expression of beliefs and the representation of intertests and ideals – both of which can be divisive – can function effectively in society if those who use them for their own particularistic ends are at the same time restrained by an admixture of civility. Public liberties are conditions of the proposition, confrontation and persuasion of contending beliefs, of their cultivation in autonomous corporate bodies and of their presentation to public authorities. Representative institutions are the arrangements through which contending beliefs and interests are brought forward, considered and taken into account in the making of laws governing the territorially bounded society. The institutions in which beliefs and desires or interests are proposed and confronted in argument and the institutions in which beliefs and interests are taken into account and digested discriminatingly into law cannot work acceptably without some constituent civility and consensus of the contending parties. If the contending parties are vehemently irreconcilable and if effectively contending beliefs and interests are very widely disparate, one or another of the groups will resist physically or seek to impose its will by coercion and actual violence on the other. The representative institutions cannot moreover work effectively if they have too many tasks to master and if the different contending parties within them are irreconcilable to the point where they deny the legitimacy of the institutions themselves, of the procedures for arriving at decisions and the decisions themselves, should those decisions be uncongenial to their own beliefs and interests.

100 Years of the Police in the Face of Petty Offences

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-15
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Sadło-Nowak
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
General Public ◽  
Fair Trial ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Drinking Alcohol ◽  
Surrounding Area ◽  
Important Principle ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
The Face

Police in the face of petty offences - that is, a few words about how the law of petty offences has developed and what role of the Police is (and has been) in fighting against them since Poland regained its independence. Petty offences are minor acts and there are many of them in the surrounding area . These are actions that are very burdensome for residents and affect their sense of security. A petty offence is the most frequently committed prohibited act that society is, and has historically been, confronted with, and the main reason for citizens to report to police officers. Petty offences, in particular those related to disturbing public order, quiet hours , littering and drinking alcohol in prohibited areas are, due to their nature and frequency, the most burdensome acts in society. These acts are often combined with each other and are committed simultaneously. Due to the prevalence of petty offences, they affect the general public. The Code of Petty Offences contains a catalog of penalties and a number of other ways of responding to petty offenses committed. The ways in which the police react and practice have changed over the years, just as the whole of the broader law of petty offences has changed. Its development began after Poland gained its independence in 1918. The Constitution of March 1921 did not directly decide on the model of adjudication in cases of petty offences, but adopted an important principle - the citizen's right to a fair trial (Articles 72 and 98).

Sharing Datasets of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Czech Republic (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Komenda ◽  
Jiří Jarkovský ◽  
Daniel Klimeš ◽  
Petr Panoška ◽  
Ondřej Šanca ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
General Public ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Online News ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Aggregated Data ◽  
Open Datasets ◽  
Epidemiological Characteristics ◽  
The Impact

BACKGROUND At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of providing access to data plays a crucial role in providing the general public and media with up-to-date information. Open datasets also represent one of the means for evaluation of the pandemic on a global level. OBJECTIVE The primary aim of this paper is to describe the methodical and technical framework for publishing datasets describing basic and advanced epidemiological characteristics related to the COVID-19 epidemic in the Czech Republic, including the use of these datasets in practice. METHODS As a reaction to the epidemic situation, a new portal COVID‑19: Current Situation in the Czech Republic was developed and launched in March 2020 to provide a fully-fledged and trustworthy source of information for the public and media. The portal also contains a section for the publication of (i) public open datasets available for download in CSV and JSON formats and (ii) authorized-access-only section where the authorized persons can (through an online generated token) safely visualize or download regional datasets with aggregated data at the level of the individual municipalities and regions. The data are also provided to the local open data catalogue of the Ministry of Health and to the National Catalogue of Open Data. RESULTS The datasets have been published in various authentication regimes and widely used by general public, scientists, public authorities and decision-makers. The total number of API calls since its launch in March 2020 to 15th December 2020 exceeded 13 million. The datasets have been adopted as an official and guaranteed source for outputs of third parties, including public authorities, non-governmental organizations, scientists and online news portals. CONCLUSIONS Datasets currently published as open data meet the 3-star open data requirements, which makes them machine-readable and facilitates their further usage without restrictions. This is essential for making the data more easily understandable and usable for data consumers. In conjunction with the strategy of the MH in the field of data opening, additional datasets meeting the already implemented standards will be also released, both on COVID-19 related and unrelated topics.

Public Procurement and Transparency in the Private Sector

2021 ◽  
pp. 176-194
Author(s):  
Tom Brown
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
General Public ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Procurement Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Pay Differences ◽  
United Kingdom Government

This chapter begins by considering public procurement in the context of equality duties. The United Kingdom government has not used the Equality Act 2010’s regulation-making powers to impose specific statutory public procurement equality duties in England, but the Welsh and Scottish Ministers have made such regulations. Equality considerations are nonetheless relevant considerations in a public authority’s public procurement decisions as part of the general public sector equality duty in section 149 of the Act. The extent to which equality can (and should) be taken into account in the public procurement process is also, therefore, relevant to private undertakings which might wish to tender for the provision of goods or services to public authorities. The chapter then addresses the provisions in the Act intended to improve transparency in the private sector by prohibiting clauses which prevent employees discussing their pay. The Act introduced, in section 78, a power to make regulations which would impose a requirement on businesses to report on gender pay differences.

18. Human Rights II: Emergent Principles

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Loveland
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Political Order ◽  
European Convention ◽  
World War ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
European Court ◽  
English Law

This chapter presents an overview of the European Convention on Human Rights, an International treaty originating in the reconstruction of Europe’s political order following World War II. The chapter is organised as follows. Section I discusses the main procedural and substantive features of the Convention itself, whilst Section II assesses its status and use in English law up until (approximately) the early-1990s. Sections III and IV examine the leading judgments of the European Court on Human Rights in the areas of privacy and freedom of expression.

Zwierzynski v. Poland

2001 ◽  
Vol 12 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 367-370
Keyword(s):  
Moral Obligation ◽  
The State ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Public Order ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Guardian ◽  
Fair Balance

Any interference with the protection of property had to strike a fair balance between the demands of the general interest of the community and the requirements of the protection of the individual's fundamental rights. The requisite balance would not be struck where the person concerned bore an individual and excessive burden. Where an issue in the general interest was at stake it was incumbent on the public authorities to act in an appropriate manner and with utmost consistency. In addition, the State, as the guardian of public order, had a moral obligation to lead by example and it had a duty to ensure that its organs charged with the protection of public order enforced observance of that obligation.

scholarly journals Justifying Limitations on the Freedom of Expression

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gehan Gunatilleke
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
National Security ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Proportionality Test ◽  
The Individual

Abstract The freedom of expression is vital to our ability to convey opinions, convictions, and beliefs, and to meaningfully participate in democracy. The state may, however, ‘limit’ the freedom of expression on certain grounds, such as national security, public order, public health, and public morals. Examples from around the world show that the freedom of individuals to express their opinions, convictions, and beliefs is often imperilled when states are not required to meet a substantial justificatory burden when limiting such freedom. This article critiques one of the common justificatory approaches employed in a number of jurisdictions to frame the state’s burden to justify limitations on the freedom of expression—the proportionality test. It presents a case for an alternative approach that builds on the merits and addresses some of the weaknesses of a typical proportionality test. This alternative may be called a ‘duty-based’ justificatory approach because it requires the state to demonstrate—through the presentation of publicly justifiable reasons—that the individual concerned owes others a duty of justice to refrain from the expressive conduct in question. The article explains how this approach is more normatively compelling than a typical proportionality test. It also illustrates how such an approach can better constrain the state’s ability to advance majoritarian interests or offload its positive obligations by limiting the freedom of expression of minorities and dissenting voices.

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