Giant Interactive launches clever Jianghu campaign, may sue trademark violators

Giant Interactive has secured the trademark for Jianghu (江湖), the title of its popular MMOPRPG, and it is proclaiming its ownership throughout China with a clever advertising campaign. China’s citizens are even now taking to trains by the tens of millions in what is the world’s largest annual human migration so that they can get home to celebrate Spring Festival, and Giant has taken advantage of this by placing huge propaganda-style banners at major train stations across the country (like the one pictured above) that read: “Jianghu belongs to Giant!”

It’s a clever strategy that has already gotten the company quite a bit of attention, despite the fact that it has used this same basic strategy before. But the ads are also a warning to potential violators of the Jianghu trademark, and a Giant representative told 17173:

“Moving forward we’re not going to rule out a series of serious campaigns against knock-offs and IP violators.”

Just who that would include — and how the courts will interpret the trademark — is an interesting question. Jianghu is a pretty generic term and it appears in the title of a number of other games. For example, Perfect World’s MMORPG Swordsman Online is actually called Xiao’ao Jianghu (笑傲江湖) in Chinese. Does this, at least by Giant’s definition, make it a violator of Giant’s trademark, or is the threat meant to apply only to those games that are actually copying Jianghu‘s UI and/or gameplay elements?

It’s not clear, but it will be interesting to see whether the company does launch a string of offensive lawsuits going forward. For now, though, it will probably be content to sit back and count money while its advertisements rack up views at China’s train stations and bored youngsters are logging in to pass the time over the holidays before they return to school or work.

(via 17173)