The Department of Electronic Commence and Informatization of the Ministry of Commerce ("MOFCOM") has recently issued the Technical Recognition Guide to Confusingly Similar Brands of E-commerce Commodities (Draft for Comment) (the "Draft for Comment") and the E-commerce Service Capability Requirements and Evaluation Specification: Home Decoration Installation Services (Draft for Comment) for public comments by March 28, 2019.
For confusingly similar brands of e-commerce commodities, the Draft for Comment sets forth terms and definitions, a framework of technical recognition processes, the establishment of brand databases, specific recognition processes, and the application of the results. With regard to the framework of technical recognition processes, the Draft for Comment states that it is made up of six steps which are "establishment of brand databases", "creation of a technical recognition model for confusingly similar brands", "comparisons", "establishment of databases of brands likely to generate confusing similarities", "organization of public reviews" and "output of results of public reviews". Moreover, the Draft for Comment states that e-commerce platform operators shall subject their databases of brands possibly causing confusing similarities to the public reviewing process, adding that they shall assign the reviewing tasks at random after setting a time limit for the reviewing process as needed, and allow reviewers to select the tasks at their own discretion and conduct independent reviews. There should be at least 500 reviewers engaged in a single reviewing task.