When it comes to building a duck food brand, Zhou Hei Ya’s status in the industry can be said to be prestigious. However, the development of Zhou Hei Ya in the first half of this year does not seem to be so optimistic! After closing 117 stores in half a year, net profit plummeted by 30%. Zhou Heiya seems to be at a bottleneck in development. For more trademark information, welcome to visit Bajie Intellectual Property Trademark Transfer Network!

Not only that, Zhou Hei Ya’s development is also troubled by many fakes and copycat brands. For this reason, Zhou Heiya entered a direct business model without franchise stores, and continued to increase its efforts to crack down on copyright infringement, filing infringement lawsuits with the court many times.

Not long ago, Zhou Heiya won the lawsuit.

The court held that a hotel in Beijing used a trademark that was identical or similar to the trademark involved in the case without authorization from the owner of the Zhou Hei Ya trademark, infringing the plaintiff’s exclusive right to use the registered trademark of Zhou Hei Ya Company, and ordered the plaintiff to compensate the plaintiff’s economic losses. Total losses and reasonable expenses were RMB 415,000.

On November 15, 2018, Zhou Heiya applied to the Trademark Office of the State Intellectual Property Office to cancel the "Zhou Benhei" trademark No. 1823444 (hereinafter referred to as the disputed trademark).

The respondent registered the disputed trademark on November 3, 2015. It is designated for meat, salted duck and other 29 categories of goods. Registration approved on December 14, 2016.

Zhou Heiya believes that "Zhou Benhei" is plagiarism of his well-known trademark for three reasons, and demands that the "Zhou Benhei" trademark be invalid!

1. The disputed trademark is a copy and imitation of Zhou Heiya’s well-known trademark No. 7936086 “Zhou Heya, Tu” first owned by the applicant. (On May 27, 2011, the Trademark Office determined that the No. 1 trademark it cited enjoyed a high reputation in salted duck, meat and non-live poultry products.)

2. The disputed trademarks and Cited Trademark No. 1 and No. 6313764 "ZHOUHEYA" trademark (hereinafter referred to as Cited Trademark No. 2) have formed similar trademarks on similar goods. (The registration dates of cited trademarks 1 and 2 are earlier than the application date of the disputed trademark, and they are designated for 29 kinds of salted duck meat and other products.)

3. The registration of the disputed trademark refers to the establishment of a name brand, ride-hailing, and malicious registration Trademarks, behaviors that disrupt the legal order of trademarks.

In summary, the applicant requests the Trademark Office to declare the disputed trademark invalid.

The Trademark Office considers the disputed trademark to be invalid.

1. First of all, the Chinese part of the disputed trademark "Zhou Benhei" is similar to the cited trademark "Zhou Heiya". These three trademarks have formed similar trademarks.

Moreover, the disputed trademark and the cited trademark are identical or similar in terms of functions, uses, sales channels, sales habits, etc. The existence of the above trademarks will easily make the relevant public think that the goods come from the same product. Market entities may have some kind of connection, causing chaos!

Therefore, registering the disputed trademark on the above-mentioned goods violates the provisions of Article 30 of the Trademark Law.

2. Secondly, the applicant’s evidence in this case shows that before the application date of the disputed trademark, the applicant conducted continuous and extensive publicity of cited trademark 1 in mainland China. "Citation Trademark No. 1" enjoys a high reputation and is well known to the relevant public in China.

Using a controversial trademark can easily associate the relevant public with the applicant, thereby causing misunderstandings about the product supplier, thus damaging the legitimate rights and interests of the relevant public and the applicant.

To sum up, the registration of the disputed trademark violated the provisions of Article 13, Paragraph 3 of the Trademark Law.

3. Although the evidence submitted by the applicant in this case cannot prove that the registration of the disputed trademark violated the provisions of Article 13, Paragraph 1, of the Trademark Law.

According to the provisions of Article 13, paragraph 3, Article 30, Article 45, paragraph 1, 2, and Article 46 of the Trademark Law, the Trademark Office still determines that The disputed trademark is invalid.

Intellectual property rights play an important role in the development of enterprises.

The negative impact of various counterfeit and shoddy products on the market on genuine brands cannot be underestimated.

It is recommended that enterprises pay attention to monitoring the development of market brands while making their brands bigger and stronger. Once copyright is infringed, you must resolutely safeguard your rights!

Of course, in order to avoid the risk of inadvertently infringing on other people’s trademarks and brand rights, resulting in forced rectification and fines, here is a small version of the suggestion: At the beginning of starting a business, we should prepare our own knowledge of trademarks, patents, etc. Property rights matters!

Sometimes the inspiration to start a business may be a fleeting inspiration, a passing thing, and it may not be as good as preparing to register a trademark.

Because the process of registering a trademark now takes about a year. After one year, the day lily of starting a business may be gone. Therefore, you can also directly purchase a successfully registered trademark, which can keep pace with the times and avoid risks!