Soon enough, we will hear the Mbappe trademark. The FIFA World Cup of 2018 may be over, but what we find in the China trademark databases show something very troublesome is just getting started.
The French football player Kylian Mbappé (Chinese: 姆巴佩) is one of the world cup’s most famous players who made his fame at the match against Argentina on last June 30, 2018. Guess how many applications to trademark the name 姆巴佩 MBAPPE that the China trademark office received starting from July 1, 2018?
According to our research:
姆巴佩MBAPPE /姆巴佩 : 142 applications
MBAPPE: 27 applications
Let’s compare with the numbers before 6/30:
姆巴佩MBAPPE: 3 applications
MBAPPE: 3 applications
姆巴佩:13
There is a looming problem here in the case of “trademark trolls“, in which they hurry to register trending names and hope to profit from it by selling them.
If Mr. Mbappé later wants to trademark his name to put on products or endorsement deals, at least in China he will likely have trouble. Hope he or his legal counsel is up to date with their research (remember Michael Jordan?) .