While several high profile US retailers might have chosen to part ways with her eponymous fashion label, it seems that Ivanka Trump’s personal brand is going from strength to strength – in China.
Chinese businesses are currently scrambling to trademark the First Daughter’s name, according to a report in the South China Morning Post. At least 65 applications have been submitted to China’s Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, relating to products ranging from wallpaper to alcohol.
One Beijing-based weight loss company filed 10 applications to use her name. Just a week after her father won the election, the Fujian Yingjie Commodity Company sought to use 'Ivanka' for its brand of sanitary towels.
Should the applications prove successful, these brands would be able to use the name Ivanka to sell their products. A further 40 companies are thought to have requested use of the Chinese characters for her name, most of which deal in cosmetics, clothes and underwear.
According to the South China Morning Post, the majority of these applications are still being processed, and it is by no means a given that China’s trademark authority will grant the requests.
The President’s eldest daughter has become increasingly popular in China after she visited Washington’s Chinese embassy over the Lunar New Year. Ivanka went on to post an Instagram video of her daughter, Arabella, singing in Mandarin to celebrate the New Year.
‘Arabella singing a song she learned for #ChienseNew Year. Wishing everyone an amazing year to come during these days of celebration,’ she captioned the post, which sees five-year-old Arabella playing with a dragon puppet.
Chinese trademark regulations allow businesses to use foreign names (or the Chinese version of these names) as trademarks, a practise which has previously caused some major international brands to seek action on intellectual property grounds.
Prior to the Presidential race, Donald Trump himself was involved in trademark disputes in China, after the Trademark Office ruled that a man named Dong Wei could use Trump’s name for his business projects.
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