1. Possible damage caused by the rejection of the trademark registration application In China's legal system, the trademark office's examination of the trademark registration application is based on the principle of substantive examination. If the Trademark Office finds that the applicant's application for registration violates the prohibitive provisions of the law, it will reject the application for registration ex officio. For the applicant, once the registration application is rejected, the following losses may occur. 1. Economic losses. According to the relevant regulations, if the application for trademark registration is rejected, the Trademark Office will not refund the fees collected. Trademark agencies generally do not refund the agency fees charged. This means that once the application for trademark registration is rejected, the applicant has to bear the loss of trademark registration fees. Applicants apply for registration of the same trademark in several or even dozens of categories at the same time. If the trademark is rejected as causing adverse effects, the loss of its registration fee will be enormous. 2. Loss of time. Before the trademark registration application was approved by the Trademark Office, many applicants had already started to use the trademark. However, it takes a long time for trademark examination in China, during which time, due to the use and promotion of applicants. The trademark that has been applied for reexamination has gained great popularity. Once the trademark registration application is rejected by the Trademark Office, the applicant's previous efforts will be wasted. Moreover, according to the Customs Regulations on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights, the protection of trademark rights by the Customs is limited to registered trademarks. Non-registered trademarks are less protected by the customs. If the applicant's application for trademark registration is rejected by the Trademark Office, even if the applicant can approve the registration of the trademark through the rejection review procedure, the review period of the trademark rejection review case is long, which will affect the process of obtaining customs protection for the trademark. 3. Legal costs. There are two main legal risks arising from the rejection of the application for trademark registration: First, if the applicant filed an application for international registration of a trademark according to madrid agreement concerning the international registration of marks after filing an application for registration in China. Once the trademark is rejected by the Trademark Office, the applicant's application for international registration will be rejected because the basic registration is invalid according to the principle of central strike. Second, the application for trademark registration was rejected by the Trademark Office on the basis of Article 28 of the Trademark Law as similar to the previously registered cited trademark. If the applicant fails to file an application for rejection of reexamination within the statutory time limit or the rejection of reexamination application is unreasonable, then the ruling has legal effect on the identification that the applied trademark is similar to the cited trademark. If the applicant has already used the trademark, then the person citing the trademark right may claim that the applicant's use constitutes trademark infringement according to the ruling and ask the applicant to bear the tort liability. To sum up, if the application for trademark registration is rejected by the Trademark Office, it will have a great impact on the rights and interests of the applicant. Therefore, in the process of trademark application, we should try our best to avoid the rejection of registration application. However, in the actual operation process, there are certain risks in trademark registration, and the control of the applicant's registration risk is weak. How to avoid risks is an important work content in the process of trademark registration. 2. Risks in the process of trademark registration application Articles 1, 11 and 28 of China's Trademark Law clearly prohibit registered trademarks. If the above rules are violated, the trademark registration application will be rejected by the Trademark Office. In the process of trademark examination, examiners have higher discretion, and the examination standards of different examiners are also different. This makes it impossible for applicants to effectively control the registration risk before applying. The author summarizes the possible risks in the process of trademark registration as follows: 1. It is similar to other people's previous trademark registration applications. Although the State Administration for Industry and Commerce has opened the trademark inquiry system, there are some shortcomings in the trademark inquiry service provided by China Trademark Online. First of all, the system has a blind search period of six months, and the registration application filed within six months cannot be queried through the system. Secondly, although the system can accurately query the same trademark registered earlier, there is still a big deficiency in the query of similar trademarks. Thirdly, the system queries graphic trademarks through the description of graphic elements. Because inquirers and trademark information loggers have different understandings of trademark elements, the trademark inquiry system still cannot accurately inquire graphic trademarks. Finally, the system can only accurately query the similarity of goods using trademarks to categories, not to every commodity, and not to accurately query similar trademarks used on similar goods in similar groups. In the process of examination, the judgment of similar trademarks and similar commodities depends on the examiner's discretion, especially graphic trademarks, and there is no strict and unified examination standard. Even if an accurate inquiry about a previously registered trademark is made, the Trademark Office may reject it according to Article 28 of the Trademark Law. 2. Violation of prohibitive provisions Article 1 of China's Trademark Law makes prohibitive provisions on trademarks. However, in the practice of trademark registration application, it is impossible for the applicant to know all sectors of society in advance. The registered trademark applied for can easily violate this provision. For example, according to this regulation, administrative divisions at or above the county level, famous foreign cities and signs that cause adverse effects shall not be used as trademarks. However, there are thousands of county-level administrative divisions in China, and it is impossible for the applicant to be fully familiar with them when registering a trademark. It is even more impossible to know all about famous foreign cities. The applicant's registration behavior did not confuse the malice of the relevant public, but the trademark application was rejected by the Trademark Office because it was objectively the same as the administrative division at or above the county level. In the practice of examination, it is generally forbidden to register religious words as trademarks. However, because many applicants don't believe in religion in life, they can't realize the religious meanings contained in some religious terms that have been put into life. Such trademarks are easily rejected by the Trademark Office in accordance with Article 1 of the Trademark Law during the application process. For example, a company in Beijing applied for the registered trademark of its online game "Tianlong Babu". The Trademark Office rejected its application for registration in accordance with Article 1 of the Trademark Law. 3. Lack of distinctiveness According to the provisions of Article 1l of the Trademark Law, the marks indicating the characteristics and quality of goods shall not be used as registered trademarks. According to the basic principle of trademark law, according to the relationship between trademark and goods used, it can be divided into fictitious trademark, narrative trademark and indication trademark. Descriptive trademarks and indicative trademarks are closely related to the goods in which the trademarks are used, and it is easy to be regarded as a description of the characteristics of the goods and the application for registration is rejected. There are certain risks in the registration of such trademarks. For the fictitious trademark, although it has a low correlation with the goods used in trademark application. But in practice, when the popularity of a trademark reaches a certain level, the applicant wants to protect the market value of the trademark. It is often registered in all categories of goods, and there are certain risks at this time. For example, the "Apple" computer is not a description of the goods in the ninth category of goods, which meets the legal requirements. However, if it is extended to the fruit of the 31 ST category of goods towel, it is obviously a description of the goods used in the trademark application. 3. Avoidance of risks in the process of trademark application In view of the above-mentioned registration risks, the author summarizes the following registration methods to avoid registration risks: 1. Split the elements of a trademark and apply for registration separately. The examination standards for letters, characters and graphics in a trademark are different. Because of the strong identification and correspondence of the text part, the applicant can design the trademark text part flexibly to avoid the legal prohibition. However, the graphic part and the English letter part have poor certainty, and the examiner has strong discretion in the review process. Even if the applicant deliberately distinguishes the trademark from the previous application in the process of designing the trademark, it may be recognized as an approximate trademark in the process of examination because of the different aesthetic standards of each person. Once a single part of a combined trademark is similar to another person's previously registered trademark or violates the legal prohibition, the whole trademark will be rejected as a whole. Because of the above risks, the author suggests that when applying for registration of a combined trademark, the trademark can be divided into three separate trademarks: text, graphics and letters. In this way, even if some parts violate the law, it will not affect the use of other parts. Moreover, China's laws do not prohibit the use of multiple trademarks on a commodity. After the above-mentioned trademarks are approved and registered, they can be used in combination to achieve the use effect of combined trademarks. Applying for registration by splitting can not only avoid the registration risk, but also increase the flexibility of trademark use. 2. Actual use of the trademark after the application for trademark registration According to the theory of trademark law, if the trademark applied for is similar to or simply reflects the characteristics of the goods and other factors, it is determined that the trademark is not significant and may not be used as a registered trademark. The distinctiveness referred to here is the inherent distinctiveness of a trademark, also known as inherent distinctiveness. However, Article 11 of the Trademark Law also stipulates the situation of obtaining distinctiveness through use. The distinctiveness here refers to the external distinctiveness of a trademark. The author believes that after applying for registration of a trademark, the applicant should actively use it and do a good job in promotion and publicity. Because the application period of a trademark is generally as long as three years, even if the trademark is deemed not to be significant, it is possible to make the salience of the trademark meet the legal requirements after three years of active promotion. However, it should be noted that if the trademark is obviously similar to the previous registration application of others, then the applicant should strictly manage the use behavior. The approximate examination of trademarks is a discretionary process of examiners, which has certain risks. If the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board supports the Trademark Office's reasons for rejection in the process of rejection and reexamination, the judgment that the trademark applied for reexamination is similar to that of others will become res judicata. In this case, the applicant's use of trademark in the process of registration can be regarded as trademark infringement. 3. Protecting trademark rights through various legal means The trademark application process generally lasts for three years, during which the applicant does not have exclusive rights. This stage is the most fragile stage of trademark legal protection. If others use the same trademark, it will not only cause confusion and misunderstanding among the relevant public, but also make the trademark lose its distinctiveness and become the common name of the commodity. Therefore, the author suggests that the trademark owner should protect the intangible property contained in the trademark through other means during the application process. First of all, copyright registration can be put forward to the copyright protection center as a work of art or calligraphy in the trademark. In this way, the exclusive right of the applicant to the graphic is determined in the form of copyright. Copyright registration is cheap, and many local copyright protection centers do not charge fees when handling copyright registration. Moreover, it has a wide range of protection and is not limited by the types of goods used. Even if others use the trademark in unrelated categories, it can be considered as infringement. However, it should be noted that copyright only protects ideas, not expressions. If others use similar trademarks, it will cause confusion and misunderstanding among the relevant public, but it does not constitute copyright infringement. Secondly, trademarks and packaging and decoration can be applied for design patents. In view of the strong protection of patent rights in China. Applying for design can protect the logo strongly. Moreover, the examination period of design patents is much shorter than that of trademarks. There is no restriction on the types of goods used for patent rights. Because of the principle of equivalence in infringement judgment, even if the trademark used by others is different from the trademark applied for registration, it will be regarded as infringement. However, it should be noted that if the application for a patent for design of the logo does not meet the requirements of the Patent Law for patent novelty, it is a typical junk patent. And patents need to pay a certain annual fee. If the infringer puts forward the patent invalidation procedure, it will affect the actual use effect of the right. To sum up, the author thinks that although there are some risks in the process of trademark examination, if you do a good job of inquiry before applying and make a systematic registration plan according to the characteristics of the industry, you can effectively avoid the above risks and ensure that the legitimate rights and interests of the applicant are effectively protected by law.