The need of a trade mark law in China has long been felt and for something more than a generation foreign traders in this country have been complaining that they have had no protection against imitations, adulterations, forged labels and what not. The Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce has recently evolved a perfectly good trade-mark law, based upon the best foreign precedents, with the inevitable accompaniment of a registration fee. After all the rumpus about the lack of such laws, the Chinese authorities are astonished to find that foreign firms are in no haste to register and that the Diplomatic Body has even gone so far as to make recognition of the new regulations diplomatic issue.
To the majority of Chinese this is beyond comprehension.
The real difficulty is that, in spite of bitter experience, the Chinese have never learned that the ultra-practical foreigner will always insist upon making a distinction between forms and performances. They cannot understand that the mere promulgation of a Jaw upon good paper in excellent.handwriting, chopped with a seal cut by an acknowledged master in seal cutting, does not take the place of an effective guarantee of protection.
The Diplomatic Body reserves the right to approve of the new copyright laws before they ~are
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.