Shaanxi People's Broadcasting Station is engaged in a landmark intellectual property rights battle with US publishing group Times over the right to use the title "Fortune."

The US company accused the station's Fortune programme and logo of infringing upon the US company's Fortune trademarks, which has been registered in China.

The State Industrial and Commercial Administration Bureau revealed in a notice that the US company has applied to the State Industrial and Commercial Administration Bureau for a judgment on the trademarks.

The 73-year-old Fortune magazine is published by the Times Company of the United States, and is an authoritative magazine in global financial and economic circles. Every year its Fortune Forum of the world's top 500 enterprises attracts wide attention.

The Fortune programme of the Shaanxi People's Broadcasting Station was launched in 2000 and registered its trademarks with the State Industrial and Commercial Administration Bureau, said Xu Laijian, director of Shaanxi People's Broadcasting Station.

"We were the first to use 'Fortune' as the registered trade- marks of the broadcasting programme and later many TV and radio broadcasting programmes also used such a name," said Wang Lihong, director of the Fortune programme.

After receiving the notice from the State Industrial and Commercial Administration Bureau about the dispute over Fortune, the Shaanxi's Fortune has sent its complete case to the State Industrial and Commercial Administration Bureau, Wang said.

Zhang Xi'an, lawyer for the Shaanxi People's Broadcasting Station, indicates that the radio programme Fortune does not infringe upon the trademarks of the US Fortune, because they are two different things.

"The name and logo of the Fortune radio programme are very different from the magazine Fortune and in Shaanxi a large number of local people know of the radio programme, but only a few readers know of the magazine," Zhang said.

The way in which Shaanxi's Fortune and the US Fortune carry out their services are also different. The Fortune programme uses radio and the US magazine and net service use computers, video and software, the lawyer said.

The dispute over the Fortune trademarks is the first battle over intellectual property between a Chinese institution and a US business after China's entry into the World Trade Organization in late 2001, and China's enterprises and media will learn from it, the lawyer said.

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