In 2014, there were 2.28 million trademark applications nationwide, and 1.13 million trademarks were rejected. That is to say, half of the trademark applications are rejected, which means that half of the trademark application companies spend their money in vain, and in the end they end up with nothing. What causes the success rate of trademark applications to be so low? So how to improve the success rate of trademark applications? After analysis and discussion with professional personnel, the author came to the following conclusions to share with everyone.

Trademark application volume and success rate from 2010 to 2014

Reason 1 for failed trademark applications: Trademark resources are decreasing year by year.

By the end of 2014, my country’s cumulative trademark applications had reached 15 million, the cumulative number of registrations exceeded 9 million, and the number of valid registered trademarks reached more than 7.7 million, ranking first in the world.

More than 65% of the trademarks in trademark applications are Chinese trademarks. According to the national standard (Chinese GB231280), there are 6763 Chinese characters, including 3755 first-level Chinese characters and 3008 second-level Chinese characters. In fact, there are only more than 4,000 Chinese characters that are most commonly used in our lives. The different combinations of these Chinese characters are ultimately limited, even with numbers, letters and graphics. Our applications are growing at a rate of 400,000 every year. On average, 10,000 trademark applications are submitted nationwide every working day.

Hey! A bold guess: Based on this growth rate, maybe the success rate of trademark applications will be less than 25% in four or five years.

Dear friends, companies that do not yet have a trademark should apply quickly!

Reason 2 for failed trademark applications: The implementation of the new Trademark Law has improved the examination standards.

May 1, 2014 is the beginning of the implementation of the new Trademark Law. The new Trademark Law regulates many issues such as trademark review standards, review procedures, and review time limits.

May 1, 2014 was also the day when the third phase of the Trademark Office’s office automation system was launched. However, due to major technical failures, the entire system ran slowly and had many bugs, making it unable to perform normal work. By mid-August Only then gradually recovered. Since the new Trademark Law stipulates that the examination period will no longer exceed 9 months, when the system is basically ready for use, it has already been delayed for 4 months. After that, the examiners work overtime and the examination work begins. Some examiners even work at night. Instead of going home, I live directly in my workplace to catch up on my progress. The quality of examination of some trademarks used in such work has been reduced. In the past, some trademarks that could pass after analysis were rejected in such work. Personally, the censor's current review standard is: "I would rather kill a thousand people by mistake than let one go."

Three reasons for the failure of trademark applications: the addition of a new examination agency (Trademark Examination Collaboration Center) and the inconsistent examination standards of examiners.

The number of trademark applications has increased year by year, resulting in a serious shortage of staff in the Trademark Office. Therefore, in 2014, the original Tongda Trademark Service Center was transformed into the Trademark Examination Collaboration Center and took on part of the examination work. Moreover, these two examination agencies recruit new examiners every year. Due to the lack of experience of the new examiners, this also This leads to the inevitable result of inconsistent trademark examination standards. In order not to take responsibility, the examiners actually follow the principle of rejecting if they can (they would rather kill a thousand by mistake than let one go). As long as there is a slight similarity in the trademark name, it will basically be rejected. The only remedy is to apply for a rejection review, otherwise you will have to give up the trademark application, and there will be no room for reasoning. I wonder if the Trademark Office can establish a wrongful case recovery system. Some application cases that are obviously wrongly determined should be recovered to avoid causing time and money losses to enterprises.