New York Times' China Grants Ivanka Trump Initial Approval for New Trademarks:
HONG KONG — China granted initial approval for 16 new trademarks to Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter and senior adviser, renewing questions about the Trump family’s intermingling of official roles and international business interests.
Among the broad array of trademarked items were shoes, shirts and sunglasses — the sort of products that were sold under her recently closed fashion label. Other categories given initial approval were less obvious fits, like voting machines, homes for senior citizens and semiconductors. (emphasis added)
Washington Post: China greenlights large batch of Ivanka Trump trademark applications (Mercury News also):
HONG KONG — Ivanka Trump-branded semiconductors and voting machines? In China? (emphasis added)
That’s an odd, if remote, possibility after Chinese trademark regulators awarded preliminary approval for 16 trademark applications from the president’s daughter and White House senior adviser, online Chinese government filings show.
The approvals by Beijing on Oct. 13 were notable for their timing, coming just as Chinese and U.S. officials were seeking to restart trade talks that had collapsed amid acrimony. They also raised eyebrows for covering a grab-bag of products, including electoral hardware in a country not exactly known for its elections.
Question: Do trademark applications for specific technological products like voting machines or semiconductors require the submission of a related patent, or a design, invention, or at least example of an embodiment as part of the trademark application?