Why are there so many ＂Bao Shifu joining＂ shanzhai Bao Shifu on the Internet？
One of the ways to identify the true and false Master Bao’s stores is to see whether the food bags are printed with the names and addresses of 13 stores in Beijing.
After a soft fluffy cake became online celebrity, it triggered a protracted battle for Master Bao’s trademark rights protection. Bao Caisheng, the founder of Master Bao’s pastry, said in an interview with the Beijing Youth Daily reporter that he originally wanted to do a good job in pastry, but he did not expect to be caught in a large-scale anti-counterfeiting war from 2016. His biggest feeling for more than two years was "difficult". In addition to the endless stream of counterfeiters, Master Bao’s brand was controversial by public opinion last summer because of the rumor of "hiring a childcare queue". Although Master Bao immediately denied the rumor, the popularity of the store dropped significantly due to this storm.
However, to his relief, trademark infringement cases have made the latest progress. On March 15th, the Beijing Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce investigated and dealt with 33 fake Bao Shifu stores. On March 14th, at 2pm, Master Bao’s trademark rights lawsuit was held for the first time in Nanjing.
phenomenon
Online speculation "Master Bao joins"
Search for the word "Master Bao" and more than 15,000 items such as "Master Bao Joins", "Master Bao official website", "Master Bao Head Office" and "Master Bao Head Office" pop up on the Internet immediately. Click on several pages calling themselves Master Bao’s headquarters and Master Bao’s official website one after another, and you can see all kinds of joining information and store expansion information. After browsing, you will find that the styles of these web pages are almost the same. First, several pictures of consumers queuing in front of Master Bao’s store are presented, and then the consultation telephone number and message window pop up immediately. Then the online customer service warmly greets: "Hello, if you want to know about the project of joining us, please leave your name and phone number." Master Bao has joined the recruitment website, saying that they have a professional operation team to conduct detailed baking training for the franchisees, and can also evaluate the address of the business circle, provide opening decoration drawings, on-site supervision of decoration construction, regular and irregular training after opening, and promise that "it only takes 3-6 months to return to the company, breaking the traditional industry return period".
Another "Master Bao" website shows that it plans to expand 300 stores nationwide in 2018, and the initial fee for standard stores of 30-40 square meters is 98,000 yuan; The franchise fee for flagship stores over 60 square meters is 198,000 yuan. In addition, the franchisee shall bear the store decoration fee of 600 yuan/m2, the equipment fee of 20,000-30,000 yuan, and the working capital of 20,000 yuan or 40,000 yuan according to the size of the store.
However, Bao Caisheng, the founder of Master Bao, made it clear in an interview with the reporter of Beiqing Daily that at present, Master Bao’s cakes have only opened WeChat WeChat official account, and there is no official website yet, and there is no plan to recruit franchisees in the future. Entrepreneurs should be careful when investing.
It is understood that Master Bao has only opened 13 stores in Beijing, all of which are direct stores. However, the reporter of Beiqing Daily searched on the map of Beijing and found that there were 263 Master Bao stores. This means that there are 250 Master Bao’s pastry shops, all of which are cottage versions.
visit
Online celebrity meat floss products have been removed from the shelves.
Ms. Jin, a citizen, is a senior "Bao powder" and likes two kinds of floss products best. "In the past, I often went to the Yonghe Palace store and Anding store to queue up, usually for 20 minutes to half an hour, but now it is much better. Every time I buy it, there are two or three people in front." Ms. Jin said.
Last week, a reporter from Beiqing Daily visited Master Bao’s pastry shop in Anding, and found that the former online celebrity foods-beef floss Beckham and pork floss Beckham-had been removed from the shelves, and new products were placed on the shelves of the store. In addition, other star products of Master Bao: raisin cake, peach cake, egg yolk cake, egg tart and sponge cake are still on sale.
Regarding how to identify the true and false Bao Shifu store, the salesperson told the reporter of Beiqing Daily that the first is the employee’s clothing. She pointed to a sign on the left chest of the white overalls, "Bao Shifu", "We are really Bao Shifu’s employee dressing the." Secondly, in addition to the consumer’s bill, the receipt also bears the words "Master Bao never joins", and lists the names and addresses of 13 authentic shops of Master Bao in Beijing. Third, the food bags are printed with the names and addresses of Master Bao’s 13 stores in Beijing. "They think it is not difficult to fake work clothes." Bao Caisheng said with a wry smile, "Soon we will print the WeChat QR code on the packaging bag to help consumers identify the true and false. This measure should be more effective."
Bao Caisheng explained that although these two cakes were made in online celebrity, the national standard of meat floss was adjusted last year, so we must change the product names according to the national requirements. "The two products have to be removed if they are popular again." Bao Caisheng said. Previously, two products of nominal fluffy bread sold by another bakery chain were punished by the industrial and commercial department because they actually used fluffy pine. According to the national regulations, floss refers to pure meat processed by a certain process, while floss is made of meat and plant fibers such as soybean flour floss.
progress
Beijing made a surprise investigation of 33 Bao Shifu.
On the afternoon of March 15th, the Beijing Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce organized the city’s law enforcement forces to conduct on-the-spot inspections on 33 pastry shops in 16 districts suspected of infringing the registered trademark of Master Bao. It was found that most of the shops used the word "Master Bao" in prominent positions in the stores and on the outer packaging and food bags of the cakes they sold, and they could not provide valid trademark registration certificates and authorization procedures.
It is reported that the Beijing Municipal Administration for Industry and Commerce recently received a report from Beijing Bao Caisheng Catering Management Co., Ltd., claiming that a number of pastry shops in Beijing violated their exclusive right to use the registered trademark of Master Bao, and requested to investigate and deal with it. The industry and commerce department said that it will pay close attention to the clues of relevant cases, further investigate and verify them in combination with the relevant demands of trademark owners, and deal with them according to law.
The Beijing Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce said that in view of the frequent infringement disputes of well-known trademark brands, the industrial and commercial departments will take the following measures to increase the protection of the exclusive right to use registered trademarks. First, promote the construction of trademark registration acceptance window, provide enterprises with one-stop, one-on-one, face-to-face, all-round and high-quality services, and guide enterprises to improve trademark registration protection. The second is to set up a trademark brand guidance station to guide and help enterprises to carry out trademark registration, application, management and protection, and provide convenient, high-quality and efficient trademark brand guidance services for market participants. Third, efforts should be made to improve and perfect the long-term mechanism of trademark supervision, adhere to the combination of daily supervision and special rectification, implement "double random and one open" supervision of trademarks, strengthen efforts to crack down on infringement of trademark intellectual property rights and the manufacture and sale of counterfeit and shoddy goods, promote the implementation of trademark credit supervision, severely investigate and deal with infringement and counterfeiting cases in the Internet field, and adhere to online and offline integrated governance.
observe
Entrepreneurs should avoid leaving trademark hidden dangers.
At 2 pm on March 14th, Master Bao’s lawsuit on rights protection was held for the first time in Nanjing. How to judge trademark infringement? According to the introduction of intellectual property legal persons, the first is the judgment of trademark similarity between plaintiff and defendant. According to the Trademark Examination Standard, whether there is similarity is judged from the aspects of the font, pronunciation and meaning of words, the composition and color of graphics, the overall structure after the combination of various elements, and the general attention of the relevant public. Secondly, it is about the judgment of similar goods between plaintiff and defendant. Determine whether the goods of the plaintiff and the defendant are the same or similar in function, use, main raw materials, production department, sales channels, sales places, consumption objects, etc.
Lawyers suggested that when applying for a trademark, enterprises should adopt a main trademark and several defensive trade mark models to apply, and at the same time, they should also apply in defensive trade mark in similar fields. Prevent others from using similar trademarks or applying in similar fields. In addition, the third-party e-commerce platform should strengthen the management of the settled merchants, and eliminate the influence of the infringement in the first time and rectify it in time to prevent the infringement result from further expanding.
After Master Bao became online celebrity, the infringement phenomenon followed. In just one year, according to the preliminary statistics of the company’s legal affairs, there were at least 1,000 infringing shops in China. "Master Bao has only opened 26 direct stores nationwide." Bao Caisheng said, "At present, there are only 13 authentic shops in Beijing, but now there are more than 200 fake abalone masters in Beijing, including more than 100 fake shops, which are exactly the same as mine in store decoration, product sales and even product packaging."
Due to many reasons, such as limited funds, insufficient manpower and poor awareness of self-protection, entrepreneurs often choose to make their business bigger and products better first, and postpone their trademark registration application, or register some trademarks first. In this way, there are many hidden dangers of trademark infringement. As Bao Caisheng said: "Our awareness of self-protection is too poor. We didn’t cover all categories when we registered the trademark, so that others took advantage of it." Therefore, entrepreneurs should realize that the current development does not represent the future, and the premise of ensuring the sustainable development of enterprises is to protect intellectual property rights. Because once there are loopholes in the trademark, there will be short-term economic losses and long-term economic losses will be even greater. The domestic business environment and business rules are rapidly evolving, and the right to speak of intellectual property rights is gradually increasing. Only from the perspective of judicial rights protection, the amount of related litigation and compensation is growing rapidly every year. Once the trademark layout is not done well, it is easy to bury the trademark hidden trouble, but by then the market has already begun to promote and has a certain popularity, and if it encounters the problem of trademark infringement again, it will not be worth the candle. Therefore, enterprises should "trademark first" and lay a solid foundation for the sustainable development of enterprises in the early stage. At the same time, experts said that for enterprises, honest management is the key to the healthy development of any company.
Reporter’s follow-up
What kind of company is Master Bao?
In the first half of 2013, the TV food channel interviewed and reported Master Bao’s cake Yonghe Palace, which made Master Bao’s meat floss Beckham quickly become popular. When people came to queue up to buy meat floss Beckham, they also found that other cakes were delicious, so Master Bao’s peach cakes, egg tarts, raisin cakes and egg yolk cakes also became popular.
Beijing company is registered in a residential building.
Master Bao’s full name is "Beijing Bao Caisheng Catering Management Co., Ltd.". According to Beijing Enterprise Credit Information Network, Beijing Bao Caisheng Catering Management Co., Ltd. was established on May 4, 2015 with the registered address of "Room 3009, Unit 1, Building 99, Chaoyang North Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing", with a registered capital of 10 million yuan and the legal representative Bao Caisheng. It is understood that Bao Caisheng has two main members, Bao Caisheng is the general manager and executive director, and Peng Yanli is the supervisor. The company chose "no publicity" for information such as the number of employees and the assets of the enterprise.
According to Chinese laws, the company’s registered place is the company’s office address. Last Wednesday, the reporter of Beiqing Daily visited the registered address of the company and found that Building No.99 of Chaoyang North Road, also called "Joy Apartment", is an ordinary residential building and serviced apartment next to Chaoyang Joy City. On the 30th floor of Unit 1 of the apartment, there is no sign for the elevator to enter the company.
Bao Caisheng said that the company is headquartered in Shanghai.
The reporter of Beiqing Daily found Room 3009 in the depths of the quiet and dim corridor by inquiring about the floor fire protection schematic, and found that the door here was closed, and Bao Caisheng’s company logo was not found. There was a pair of red couplets on the door, which looked exactly like ordinary houses. In the subsequent interview, the reporter of Beiqing Daily verified with Bao Caisheng, and Bao Caisheng confirmed that the above address was indeed the registered address of the company, "but not the company headquarters." He said, "Our company is headquartered in Shanghai at present." When the reporter of Beiqing Daily asked about the composition of the company’s departments and the number of personnel, Bao Caisheng did not give a positive answer.
The reporter of Beiqing Daily learned through the inquiry system of enterprise industry and commerce that on July 17, 2017, the company invested in Shanghai Master Bao Catering Management Co., Ltd. with a registered capital of 100,000 yuan. The registered place is the first floor shop at No.576 Huaihai Middle Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai, which is actually a store of Master Bao. Although the registered capital is not much, Master Bao has expanded his store in Shanghai very quickly. Up to now, Bao Caisheng has opened five stores in Shanghai.
Last year, I was troubled by "hiring people to queue up"
According to Bao Caisheng, it takes at least 1 million yuan to open a master Bao pastry shop now, and 2 million yuan for a slightly larger one.
It is worth mentioning that last summer, Master Bao’s pastry in Shanghai People’s Square became a hit overnight. According to media reports, local consumers have to wait in line for six or seven hours to eat Master Bao’s cakes. But soon, the saying that the boss hired people to line up was circulated on the Internet. Master Bao immediately denied the rumor and thought that it was very likely that the scalper was retaliated by throwing dirty water after being hit. However, affected by this storm, the popularity of Master Bao’s store dropped significantly. Photo of this group/reporter Zhao Xinpei