As a kind of intangible property, trademark rights, like tangible property, can be freely transferred according to the will of the trademark owner within the scope permitted by law. However, in recent years, companies have continued to have trademark transfer disputes, and some trademark transfers have caused confusion among consumers about related products. To this end, Article 42 of the new Trademark Law stipulates: “When a registered trademark is transferred, the transferor and the transferee shall sign a transfer agreement and file an application with the Trademark Office at the same time. The transferee shall guarantee the use of the registered trademark. The product quality of the registered trademark.

When transferring a registered trademark, the trademark registrant shall transfer the same or similar trademarks registered on the same or similar goods that are likely to cause confusion or have other problems. If the transfer has adverse effects, the Trademark Office will notify the applicant in writing and explain the reasons. After the transfer of the registered trademark is approved, the transferee will have the exclusive right to use the trademark from the date of announcement.”

Compared with Article 39 of the original Trademark Law, the new Trademark Law mainly adds some restrictive provisions and requirements for the transfer of registered trademarks, that is, the trademark owner shall use the same trademark registered on the same or similar goods. or similar trademarks shall be transferred together with the transfer. The Trademark Office will not approve transfers that are likely to cause confusion or have other adverse effects.

Experts said that the transfer of trademark rights is different from the transfer of tangible property rights, and is also different from the transfer of patent rights and copyrights. It is related to the source and provenance of the goods, and involves the credibility and reputation of the enterprise. Therefore, different countries and regions have different restrictions on the transfer of trademark rights. For example, Germany, the United States, Sweden and Taiwan all require trademarks to be transferred together with the business of the original product production and operation enterprise. In other words, you cannot transfer only the trademark without transferring the business. However, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, Canada and other countries have proposed that trademark rights and their affiliated commodity operations are not connected together. The trademark owner can transfer the trademark and the business together or not together.

However, in order to ensure the quality of the goods used by the transferee using the registered trademark, there are many legal provisions that the transfer must not cause deceptive consequences or cause confusion among the public about goods from different sources. As stipulated in Article 22(4) of the UK Trademark Law, the Patent and Trademark Office will not approve the transfer of a trademark if it will cause or is likely to cause confusion in the market. The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property also states that free transfer should be conditioned on the condition that the public does not misunderstand the source and quality of the goods bearing the trademark. In this regard, my country's original Trademark Law did not provide clear provisions.

Experts said that collective transfer is a practical practice for trademark transfer in my country, but the implementation is not strict. The restrictions on the transfer of registered trademarks allow the transfer of trademarks to be separated from business operations, which does not mean that the transfer is arbitrary. If the transfer of a registered trademark may cause confusion about the products of different manufacturers or a decrease in the quality of the products, or the transfer is harmful to a third party Or the interests of the public are prohibited by law, so our country adopts an application approval system. According to the provisions of this article, the transferee shall ensure the quality of the goods using the registered trademark.

Relevant provisions also clearly stipulate that if a registered trademark is used and the goods are shoddily manufactured, passed off as inferior, and deceive consumers, the industrial and commercial administration departments at all levels will handle it according to different circumstances until the Trademark Office revokes the trademark. Registered trademark. If a registered trademark is transferred on its own, the Trademark Office shall also order it to correct or cancel its registered trademark within a time limit. Trademark transfer