Mike Atkins at the Seattle Trademark Lawyer has an interesting post — click here for the post — about a pending Chinese trademark infringement suit, in which plaintiff seeks monetary damages and a public apology to be published in newspapers.  IP Dragon follows up Atkins’s post, explaining that an apology is a Chinese trademark remedy and that an apology is a punishment in a "face saving culture," as IP Dragon describes China and Japan, the nationalities of the two entities involved in the suit.  Click here for IP Dragon’s post.

But punishment or not, this raises an interesting question for US trademark law.  It seems to me that a public apology (or acknowledgement of the infringement) would be a more powerful tool for the consumers that trademark law intends to protect than just monetary damages and an injunction.  An acknowledgement of the infringement would warn consumers who might still unwittingly purchase items based upon the infringing marks after the injunction is in place.  Maybe it is time to amend the Lanham Act.