The emergence of any theory comes from the needs of practice. In practice, after the trademarked goods are sold or transferred in a legal manner by the trademark owner or licensee, the buyer is likely to sell them again, such as wholesale, retail, resale, etc. that exist in practice. From this the problem arises. Because Article 52, Paragraph 1 of the Trademark Law stipulates that “using a trademark that is identical or similar to the registered trademark on the same or similar goods without the permission of the trademark registrant” is an infringement of the exclusive right to use a registered trademark. Therefore, the buyer is only allowed to use the trademarked goods he purchased and is not allowed to resell them, otherwise it will be trademark infringement. The result is that the trademark registrant has a complete monopoly on the sales channels for goods with trademark rights. At the same time, since the buyer purchased the goods with trademark rights in a legal manner, that is, he paid the corresponding consideration at the time of purchase. This consideration includes not only the value of the goods themselves, but also the sharing of the seller's expenses for promoting the trademark of the goods, that is, the value of the trademark existing in the goods. On this basis, the trademark owner monopolizes the sales of the goods with trademark rights. , restricting the buyer's disposal of the goods after purchase is unfair to balance the rights and interests of buyers and sellers of goods with trademark rights, and is not conducive to promoting free competition and the healthy development of the market. Based on considerations of fairness and efficiency, the rights of the trademark owner should be limited theoretically and legally, and the buyer should be allowed to continue selling. As a result, some people have proposed the theory of exhaustion of trademark rights.

This theory completely solves the problem of the legality of the buyer continuing to sell goods with trademark rights. Therefore, in order to protect the rights of the buyer and appropriately limit the rights of the trademark owner, there should indeed be a theory of exhaustion of trademark rights. However, after the trademarked goods are sold, the theoretical understanding of which rights the trademark owner has exhausted, whether completely or partially, is vague. In order to clarify this issue, it is necessary to clarify the rights protected by trademark law.