Causeway Bay Books, originally from Hong Kong, is to reopen in Taipei on Saturday as scheduled, despite an issue regarding its business registration, manager Lam Wing-kei (林榮基) said yesterday.
Lam said that he recently received a letter from a lawyer representing a bookstore in New Taipei City registered under a similar trade name in Chinese.
Warning him not to use the name in Taiwan, the company accused him of registering a similar name to compete unfairly in the same line of business, while also infringing on its trademark, Lam said.
The Hong Kong bookseller said the store, originally located in the territory’s Causeway Bay, has since been forcibly closed by the authorities.
“I didn’t expect them to register and open another fake store in Taiwan,” he said, implying that the competitor is a front for the Chinese authorities.
According to the Department of Commerce’s business registry Web site, the New Taipei City store is represented by a man named Chiang Tung-chan (蔣東展) with capital investment of NT$50,000.
The company, which does not have an English name, was registered on March 3 in Zhonghe District (中和), the registry showed.
Lam’s store was officially registered on March 31, with the English name “Causeway Bay Books Ltd,” and a Chinese name that is almost identical to the one in New Taipei City, except that it has the characters “Zhongshan” (中山) at the front of the registered name.
Lam said that his lawyer is dealing with the matter, and he still plans to open the store in Taipei on Saturday.
“I don’t care, I’m going to open my bookstore all the same,” Lam said.
Lam was one of five shareholders and staff at Causeway Bay Books, which sold books critical of Chinese leaders.
He disappeared into Chinese custody at the end of 2015 and was released on bail and allowed to return to Hong Kong in June 2016 to retrieve a hard drive listing the bookstore’s customers.
Instead, he jumped bail and went public, detailing how he was detained and blindfolded by police after crossing the border into Shenzhen, China, and spent months being interrogated.
In April last year, Lam fled to Taiwan because he was worried he would be extradited to China under a controversial extradition bill that was being considered by the Hong Kong government, but has since been withdrawn.
The Mainland Affairs Council later yesterday said that it would investigate to determine whether the Chinese Communist Party or its affiliates are behind the legal challenge.
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