FX.co ★ Snowden as a brand name

The Chinese company Hong Yuan Lan Xiang (HYLX), which is headquartered in Beijing, has applied for a trade mark registration. That is quite an ordinary procedure, especially considering the fact that dozens of companies submit such applications in China everyday. However, the managing board of this electric vehicle technology company decided to name the brand after the notorious ex U.S. Intelligence agent Edward Snowden. The choice of such a trademark is easy to explain. The company's “top-secret” technologies are supposed to be as groundbreaking as Snowden's leaks are, HYLX manager Hefeng Zhu said in his telephone interview to The South China Morning Post. The company's engineers are planning to simplify the conversion from gasoline autos to modern electric ones and accelerate the process of batteries charging. “We are talking with China’s domestic carmakers, and we aim to launch cars equipped with our technology by the end of this year,” Zhu noted. Under the current legislation of the People's Republic of China, it will take from 12 to 15 days for the patent to be approved. Moreover, the lawyers do not rule out the possibility of rejecting the application since Snowden has been considered as a “sensitive” subject to China's government. So, the authorities think that the registration of a trademark under that name is too “political”.