“Bill Clinton may have been a smoothie as a politician but he’s now proving to be the ultimate contraceptive in China. The ex-US president and the woman he had a fling with, Monica Lewinsky, have found their surnames being used on a new brand of condoms. The Guangzhou Haokian Bio-science company has registered their names as trademarks for the contraceptives. They will be given the Chinese spellings of their names – Kelitun and Laiwensiji….
The manufacturer’s general manager, Liu Wenhua, said he was not afraid that using the two names would get him into trouble. He said they were the “trademarks of two foreign surnames and can’t be seen as a violation of rights”.”
– Sky News, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005
Well, at least they’re using condoms. This seems strange to me for a number of reasons:
1. Isn’t this really old news? Does anyone care about this any more?
2. Do Chinese people know all about the Clinton/Lewinsky thing? Seems like they had other things to worry about when that was going down.
3. Does Chinese trademark law work this way? In the US you’d have troubled TMing the surname of a living non-US citizen, I think. Somebody help me out here.
As I said: At least they’re using condoms.
