China XX Company sued Huang XX Company for infringing its trademark right of Wufeng. If China XX Company actually uses the trademark within three years, Huang Company shall compensate 200,000 yuan. Huang XX Company advocates non-infringement, because it is used first, so there is no tort liability.
Court hearing
Zhaoqing Intermediate People's Court held that the trademark of Wufeng steamed dumplings produced and sold by Huang XX Company was Huang XX (hereinafter referred to as the famous trademark of Guangdong Province), and the font in the lower right corner was Huang XX (the first yellow character was marked with the letter of Zhaoqing calligraphy next door), accounting for about a quarter.
Although the sued Wufeng steamed dumplings used the word Wufeng registered by Hua XX Company, the five characters of Wufeng steamed dumplings used the same font and the same font size, and the word Wufeng was not highlighted.
In other words, Huang XX company clearly marked the trademark, origin and model on its products, which played a relatively clear identification role. Wufengbao steamed zongzi is a commodity name, which refers to such products, such as jiaozi, jiaozi and jiaozi.
In addition, as can be seen from the notarial certificate submitted by domestic XX company, in the gift box of the products involved, each kind of zongzi has a corresponding ingredient list, among which the ingredient list of steamed zongzi in Wufengbao is marked with mung beans, black beans, red beans, red kidney beans, peanuts and other materials. In other words, Huang XX Company uses the word Five Peaks, which is close to the Five Peaks it represents.
To sum up, from the analysis of the origin of the production, packaging and sales marks of Huang XX Company, there is no act of misleading public consumption by using registered trademarks, so it does not support the litigation request of Hua XX Company for infringing its trademark rights and demanding compensation.
The judge's statement
The premise of infringing the exclusive right to use a registered trademark is that the infringer uses a registered trademark in the sense of trademark law and needs to meet the conditions of confusing the source of goods with similar marks, which objectively confuses the public and misleads public consumption.
The situation of this case is that the use of registered trademarks in the goods sold by the accused merchants is not simply a mechanical determination that the merchants infringe the exclusive right to use registered trademarks, but a comprehensive judgment of whether the accused merchants have infringing intentions, whether they are enough to confuse the public in the local sales area and even the whole country, and whether they constitute use in the sense of trademark law. On this basis, compare the infringement, avoid the application of law to machinery, clarify the behavior boundary of trademark infringement, reflect the judicial orientation of strengthening intellectual property protection, and clarify the rules of judicial judgment.
This case positively evaluates legitimate and reasonable business activities, strengthens the awareness of fair competition in judicial decisions, provides clear guidance for market participants to participate in market competition legally and orderly, and is conducive to standardizing the behavior of market participants and protecting and promoting the market environment of fair competition.