In an attempt to make the rules of civil procedure more efficient, the PRC government has recently adopted property preservation measures on registered trademark rights.

The Subjecting Rights in Registered Trademarks to Property Preservation Interpretation (关于人民法院对注册商标权进行财产保全的解释)  promulgated by the Supreme People's Court on January 2 2001 demonstrates that the Peoples' Republic of China is making incremental progress in modernizing and streamlining its rules of civil procedure. In this case, rules have been enacted which attempt to ensure that courts do not make inconsistent property preservation orders in respect of registered trademarks, where the owner of the trademark is involved in more than one lawsuit involving different parties.

PROPERTY PRESERVATION ORDERS-A PRIMER

The PRC Civil Procedure Law  (中华人民共和国民事诉讼法) permits the People's Court to make property preservation orders in respect of the property of litigants. In very general terms, these are similar to mareva or freeze orders. The purpose of these is to ensure the satisfaction of court judgments. Property preservation orders may be made before or at any time during the litigation. Typically the People's Court will make a property preservation order at the request of another party, although it may do so on its own motion.

Traditionally, property preservation orders have been made only in respect of real and tangible personal property. Significantly, registered trademarks increasingly have become the subject of property preservation orders.