Al Rees even said: The easiest way to destroy a brand is to use the brand name on everything. That’s the brand dilution strategy! A better way to prevent brand dilution is to protect all trademark categories (joint trademarks combined with defensive trademark strategies).

Furthermore, if your liquor trademark is used by others or your competitors on pesticides or paints, etc., people will naturally stop buying your liquor, and your market will naturally decline. there is none left. Because when a customer thinks that there is a pesticide or paint product that also uses this trademark, he will be turned off! If he is your competitor and he wants to compete with you, he will not resort to conventional price wars or channel sniper wars. Strategy and tactics can easily defeat you.

Intellectual property protection is a system. You must not have the intention to harm others, and you must have the intention to guard against others. To prevent others from getting involved in your backyard, be careful.

Although trademarks need to specify certain categories of goods when registering, companies often hope to transcend the restrictions of product categories and establish a unique connection with the trademark logo, so that only they can use it across the country or even the world. When consumers see this logo, they only think of their own products. Lenovo Group originally made IT products such as computers and mobile phones, but did not make beer. It probably had no plans to make beer in its planning. However, someone registered the "Lenovo" trademark on beer, but Lenovo Group stopped doing it.

Lenovo Group first filed a trademark objection with the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board. The Trademark Review and Adjudication Board believed that it would not cause confusion and maintained the trademark. Lenovo Group filed an administrative lawsuit with the court. In the end, the court ruled to revoke the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board's ruling, and Lenovo Group won the case. The reason why Lenovo Group spends so much effort, manpower and material resources is to protect its trademark, prevent the dilution of the trademark, and maintain the unique connection between the trademark logo and its company's products.

Trademarks need to be registered according to the type of goods, so it is often the case that different types of goods use the same trademark or similar trademarks. Trademarks, as a symbol, have a value transmission function. If the same trademark logo cannot correspond to a unique enterprise, then the trademark value formed by a company's efforts to promote this trademark may have to be shared with other companies using the same trademark logo.

Similarly, if several companies use the same trademark, problems with the quality of one company's products may affect all companies using the trademark. Therefore, many companies spare no effort to realize the unique connection between registered trademarks and their own products and strive for cross-class protection of trademarks. So how can we achieve cross-class protection? We can mainly adopt the following measures:

1. Preliminary basic work: carefully select trademark logos

Preparatory work in the early stage is often the later stage The basis of protection work, in order to ensure the smoothness of the later protection work, it is necessary to do sufficient preliminary preparations. COFCO Group chose "Great Wall" when choosing its wine trademark. This should be said to be not a very wise choice. Today, there are too many companies that choose "Great Wall" as the trademark of their products, such as Great Wall electric fans, Great Wall Motors, Great Wall lubricants, etc. Therefore, even if the "Great Wall" trademark used by COFCO Group on wine is recognized by the court as a well-known trademark, it cannot prevent others from using the trademark. Others have already registered it.

Trademark is the most important commercial mark to recognize the source and quality of goods. When COFCO Group spends huge financial resources and energy to promote the "Great Wall" brand wine, the "Great Wall" trademark is registered on other products. Will also benefit from it. If other "Great Wall" brand products are shoddy and harm consumers, the destructive power to the "Great Wall" brand will be very great. The company may need to once again promote this "Great Wall" and not the other "Great Wall" and try its best to draw a clear line. , and this kind of effort is a potential risk and a potential cost, which should be avoided as much as possible.

Many of our private enterprises are not as wealthy as COFCO. They can turn a trademark like "Great Wall" with no new ideas into a well-known trademark, and they do not want to share the fruits of their efforts with others. What should they do?

Enterprises should be very cautious when choosing a trademark at the beginning, and try to choose a trademark that is creative and not easily confused with other people’s trademarks. For example, Exxon Oil Company spent hundreds of millions of dollars changing its trademark from ESSO to EXXON. It is said that the choice of EXXON as a trademark was based on the global market. The word will not have a derogatory connotation in any country. The most important thing is that it is a word that did not exist before, that is, a made-up word that is only associated with Exxon. If other merchants use this term or similar terms, it is very easy to be considered as a malicious free-riding behavior. Even if the registration is successful, as long as the right holder files a trademark objection, the possibility of being ruled invalid is very high. At present, there are many made-up words used as trademarks in our country, such as "Haier", "Lenovo", "Newman", etc., which have also achieved good results.

So, if a company chooses a made-up word as its trademark from the beginning, then when its trademark becomes famous, others can file a trademark objection when they imitate it and apply for a trademark, and the trademark objection will be supported. The possibilities will also be greatly increased, laying the foundation for cross-class protection.

2. Full-class registration

After choosing their own trademarks, powerful enterprises can consider full-class registration, that is, in every category of the commodity classification table. register. Full class registration has the following benefits:

1. Prevent others from registering trademarks on industries and goods that you may enter in the future, and you can take advantage of the trademark first. As the enterprise develops, so does the product chain. When companies register trademarks, they often choose the types of goods they currently produce or plan to produce. However, as the company develops, it may deviate from the expected development direction, and the scope of production and operations may expand to what was previously unavailable. If you are planning an industry or product (such as BYD's transformation), then you may find that the trademark you have used for many years has been registered by others in this field.

In this case, you will face a dilemma: if you choose a new trademark, you will not only face that the goodwill accumulated in the trademark over the years cannot be transferred to the new trademark, but you may also lose your own reputation under the new trademark. The value of competitors' trademarks in the industry is partly contributed by their own original trademarks. Therefore, it is very important to plan ahead.

2. Prevent others from registering goods with conflicting nature or use or adverse effects. Symbols have the function of transmitting information, so when registering a trademark, everyone must choose a symbol that is comfortable for people to see.

Similarly, the use of the same symbol for different products will also have a transmission function. "Master Kong" is the trademark of instant noodles. If someone registers "Master Kong" on sanitary ware, will people who happen to know this product trademark think of unclean things when eating "Master Kong" instant noodles? A wedding photo studio If the trademark is also registered in the funeral industry, will newcomers have some taboos? Wahaha? If the trademark is registered on disinfectant water, will someone feel that the taste is a little different when drinking Wahaha mineral water? These are all caused by the transmission function of symbols. However, the trademark owner cannot prevent others from registering a trademark on other categories of goods. Even a well-known trademark cannot prevent others from registering a trademark with the same logo on goods that will not cause confusion. No one would think that the manufacturer of Master Kong toilets The manufacturer is the manufacturer of Master Kong instant noodles. However, this is indeed what the trademark owner does not want to see.

So, full class registration is a better way to prevent this phenomenon. Trademark registration