Rejection is a common examination result in the process of trademark registration application, and there are usually two kinds: complete rejection and partial rejection. Among them, total rejection refers to the rejection of all goods or services of the entire trademark. Partial rejection refers to the rejection of project applications for certain goods or services.
How to improve the success rate of trademark rejection review? There are absolute and relative reasons for the rejection of trademarks. If it is an absolute reason, it is the case that the trademark law clearly stipulates that registration is not allowed.
Article 10 of the Trademark Law stipulates that national names, military symbols, symbols of international organizations, the Red Cross and Red Crescent, ethnic discrimination and deception, harmful moral customs and adverse effects, and place names related to county-level divisions shall not be registered.
Article 11 of the Trademark Law stipulates that registration shall not be granted if it involves common names, figures, models, signs describing the characteristics of goods or services, or signs lacking distinctiveness; Where a trademark is not rejected on the grounds of stacking explicitly prohibited by the Trademark Law, the trademark application may be re-examined.
The reasons for being rejected are mainly the following four situations:
The first type: the trademark has been registered by others.
When applying for examination, the examiner of the Trademark Office will first compare the existing trademark information in the database of the Trademark Office, and if a trademark with the same name and category is found, it will be rejected according to the principle of "application first".
The second type: trademark approximation
It means that the two trademarks are similar in font, pronunciation, meaning, graphic composition and color, overall structure, three-dimensional shape and TINT. It is easy to mislead or confuse the public, and will generally be rejected as an approximate trademark;
Third, brand names are generic names and descriptive words.
Names commonly used in the industry and words that only describe product features cannot be registered as trademarks, such as hotels, trademarks, beer, etc.
Fourth, trademarks lack distinctive features.
When the applied trademark is too simple, such as using simple lines and ordinary geometric figures, the examiner will think that the trademark lacks distinctive features and is not recognizable, and will reject it.
It is a right of the trademark applicant to apply for trademark rejection review. The possibility of successful rejection review is because the trademark rejection was made by the Trademark Office, but the application for trademark rejection was filed with the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board, and the review standards of the two are slightly different.
On the whole, the types of trademark rejection can be divided into absolute reasons and relative reasons. If it is an absolute reason, it is recommended to give up and reapply. If it is a relative reason, we can apply for a review.
What are the types of trademark rejection? Therefore, registering a trademark is not an easy task, and it is left to professionals to do it.