Trademark counterfeiting: comparative analysis of trademark regulations in the Italian-Chinese legislation.

Abstract

My thesis opens up analyzing the historical and international background of the industrial property law: from the first conventions that regulated the laws of the various countries in trademarks subjects to the international TRIPS agreement. The subject then shifts towards national Italian legislation, the national sources that trademarks regulation uses, introducing the concept of "trademark", its characteristics, all the registration and protection process. The second chapter analyzes the trademark discipline from the Chinese point of view, starting from the first law dated 1982 (and the 1993 revision), joining the WTO in 2001 up to the current 2014 trademark law, ending with the analysis of the trademark registration process, compared to the Italian one. The focus of the argument ends with the introduction of the problem related to counterfeiting, analysing the phenomena in all its features, both from the Italian penal code point of view and the Chinese criminal law, introducing cases and sentences that have dealt with trademark counterfeiting in the Italian-Chinese panorama.