In daily life, we can often see a small ?TM? marked in the upper right corner or lower right corner of some brand LOGOs and text names. What does this mean? TM? is in English. The abbreviation of "trademark", like "Zhu" and "Zhu", are trademark registration marks. Among them, the "Zhu" mark represents a registered trademark that has been reviewed by the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, and the "TM" mark represents a registered trademark that has been approved by the Trademark Office. Registered trademarks that have been applied for but have not yet been successfully registered.

Generally speaking, the registration period for a trademark is relatively long, about one and a half years. Many companies and individuals are eager to use the trademark, so they submit an application to the Trademark Office and get the "Trademark Acceptance Notice" After that, the TM mark was marked on the trademark that had not been successfully registered and started to be put into production. As everyone knows, there are very big hidden dangers behind this TM mark.

First of all, we must make it clear that the TM mark is not protected by the Trademark Law. Article 63 of my country's "Regulations for the Implementation of Trademark Law" stipulates: When using a registered trademark, you may indicate a "registered trademark" or registered mark on goods, product packaging, instructions or other attachments. Registration marks include and ?. When using a registered mark, it should be marked on the upper right corner or lower right corner of the trademark. ? In other words, the mark or ? means that the trademark has been successfully registered, is exclusively owned by the owner of the registered trademark, and is protected by law. No enterprise or individual may use the registered trademark without permission or authorization from the owner, otherwise it will bear infringement liability.

The ?TM? mark actually comes from abroad and is a trademark mark often used by foreign companies. In my country's "Trademark Law" and "Trademark Law Implementation Regulations", it is not related to ?TM? Regarding the legal terms related to marks, ?TM? only means that the graphics or words marked on it are trademarks of goods or services. Registered trademarks with TM marks are not protected by law and do not enjoy exclusive rights to trademarks.

Secondly, companies and individuals should keep in mind that there are risks in blindly using TM-marked trademarks. After receiving the trademark registration application, the Trademark Office will issue a "Trademark Acceptance Notice" to the applicant. There is a paragraph printed below the "Trademark Acceptance Notice": This notice only indicates that the Trademark Office has received the application. A person's trademark application does not mean that the applied trademark has been approved for registration. ?In other words, the "Notice of Trademark Acceptance" only indicates that the Trademark Office has received the applicant's application, but has not yet started examination. It is still unknown whether the trademark applied for registration can pass the examination.

If the trademark applied for registration is similar to someone else’s previously registered trademark, not only will the trademark application be rejected, but the TM trademark used by the company in advance will also infringe the exclusive rights of others’ registered trademarks, and it will need to bear the responsibility. Liability for tort. Some people may think that conducting a comprehensive search for similar trademarks before trademark registration can avoid similar situations and ensure a 100% success in trademark registration. However, many applicants do not know that even if they search on the Trademark Office website, it does not mean that there are no identical or similar trademarks. This is because there is a "blind period" problem in trademark searches.

Generally speaking, all types of trademark application documents received by the Trademark Office need to be manually classified one by one and uploaded to the database. This determines the time required from submission to retrieval of trademark application documents on the computer. With a certain information input cycle, the blind period for this trademark query is generally within 3 to 6 months. During this period, no one can determine whether there is a similar prior trademark application. The risk of similar trademarks cannot be completely eliminated. There is still a possibility that the TM trademark being used by the company will fail to be registered. Once this happens, the company will not only face infringement The risk of exclusive rights to register a trademark in advance is that the investment in publicity and marketing of the TM trademark in the early stage will also be in vain.

However, this does not mean that companies and individuals cannot use the TM trademark at all.

In our country, most companies and individuals have a common understanding of trademarks with the TM mark, that is, the TM trademark represents the marked graphics or text and has submitted a trademark registration application to the Trademark Office, indicating that the existing Trademark holders have priority rights to prevent others from filing duplicate applications. Therefore, as long as the TM mark is used reasonably, the TM mark can still play a certain role. First of all, before applying for trademark registration, you must carefully conduct a trademark search to ensure that there are no previously registered identical or similar trademarks to the maximum extent; secondly, when registering trademarks by category, you should carefully identify the trademark according to the scope of goods or services. Category, in addition, business extension should also be fully considered and the business categories that may be carried out should be registered, so as to fully and comprehensively guarantee the exclusive rights of the TM trademark and reduce the possibility of preemptive registration. If necessary, you can consult a professional trademark agency to avoid greater losses caused by errors in judgment; finally, in the process of using the TM trademark, investment in advertising, publicity, production, etc. for the TM trademark should be reasonably controlled. This is to prevent that once the TM trademark fails to be registered, all the previous publicity and promotion of the TM trademark by the company will become useless, wasting a lot of resources and money of the company. TM