A citizen passes by a trademark wall in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province. Photo: IC

A trademark registration which uses an abbreviation of Alibaba, JD, Tencent and Baidu has been denied by China's intellectual property regulation authority on the grounds of unfair competition.

The National Intellectual Property Administration recently denied the registration application of 45 trademarks that use the name "Ajingtengbai", according to a ruling.

Meizhou Xindu Technology Industrial, the company which filed the "Ajingtengbai" trademark application, intended to take advantage of the market reputation of the four companies and the registration therefore violated fair competition, the ruling said.

The 45 trademarks in question covered 45 categories including tobacco and smoking utensils, catering and accommodation, convenience food, leather goods and medicine.

An employee with the company told the Global Times on Sunday that she is not involved in the case when asked about the original intention of registering the "Ajingtengbai" trademark, and whether there will be an appeal for the next step.

"The trademark has been singled out by the outside world. You can't say that this trademark points to Alibaba, JD, Tencent and Baidu just because it contains a certain word. Similar trademarks have been approved by the trademark office," a person in charge of Meizhou Rongyida Intellectual Property Agency, which represented the trademark case, told thepaper.cn.

"Jingtaoyama" and "Taopinjingbao" were successfully registered in 2017 and 2019.

In 2019 Tencent Technology, together with JD Sanbailushidu E-commerce, Baidu Online Network Technology and Alibaba Group, jointly filed an opposition application to the trademark office of the National Intellectual Property Administration after the trademark application was filed in May 2018.

The four major Internet companies believe that the trademark "Ajingtengbai" pointed to "Ali", "JD", "Tencent", and "Baidu", the abbreviations of their respective companies. Meizhou Xindu Technology Industrial, which uses the first-letter combination, failed to submit evidence to justify its intention, a ruling showed.

The Meizhou-based company was established in 2007 with a registered capital of 20 million yuan ($2.9 million). Its business scope includes e-commerce, business information consulting, freight management, Internet software development, agricultural development, leisure and tourism, information from company information website Tianyancha showed.