Is the sentencing of trademark squatting reasonable in China?
1. Is the sentencing of trademark cybersquatting reasonable? The judgment on trademark cybersquatting is unreasonable. Generally do not touch the criminal law. If it is proved to be malicious cybersquatting, the registered trademark will be revoked. The losses caused shall be prosecuted separately. At present, there is no clear definition of registered trademark in Chinese law. Article 31 of the Trademark Law stipulates that an application for trademark registration "shall not preempt the registration of a trademark that has been used by others and has certain influence". The so-called "preemptive registration of trademarks that have been used by others and have certain influence by unfair means" refers to malicious squatting of well-known trademarks of others. Well-known trademarks refer to trademarks in use that have not been approved and registered by the Trademark Office, but have certain influence, such as time-honored brands and time-honored signboards. Most of them are the names of shops or individuals who are famous for operating a certain commodity in history, which directly represent the goods they operate. In the era when the trademark system was not implemented, these time-honored brands and old signboards often represented goods with outstanding reputation and high quality. Nowadays, in order to attract customers, businesses all over the world are scrambling to use old brands and signboards as commodity trademarks. Some merchants even get the exclusive right to use old brands and signboards by preempting trademark registration, and then sue other competitors in the same industry who use old brands and signboards first, or even the real owners of old brands and signboards whose trademarks are infringed. This kind of unfair competition is "malicious cybersquatting". Second, the purpose and function of cybersquatting, most countries and international treaties in the world are open to the subject of trademark rights. Ordinary natural persons, legal persons and other organizations may apply for trademark registration. As long as the applied trademark conforms to the provisions of the Registered Trademark Law, its registered trademark behavior is legal. Therefore, after a trademark registered in country A is registered by others in country B, the latter registration behavior is generally legal. However, there are exceptions to the legal protection of well-known trademarks. According to Article 6 bis of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, any well-known trademark recognized by a member state, whether registered in the member state requesting protection or not, shall be prohibited from being registered and used by others first. Article 16 of the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights also includes the protection of well-known trademarks. Therefore, if the registered trademark is a well-known trademark belonging to China, however, whether the well-known trademark is recognized is governed by the laws of the protected country. There is also malicious cybersquatting. According to the provisions of Article 6 septies of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, a trademark is registered in the name of an agent or representative without the authorization of the owner, and the owner of the trademark objects to the application for registration or requests to cancel the registration. According to this regulation, if the cybersquatter is the agent or representative of the original trademark owner, it is illegal to cybersquatter, and the original trademark owner may request the competent authority of the cybersquatter to cancel the registration. Generally speaking, there are several purposes for cybersquatting based on the first-come-first-served principle: one is cybersquatting speculation, which generally only wants to trade with the original trademark user in order to obtain economic benefits; The second is malicious cybersquatting. If an enterprise's products are first used in a cybersquatting country, cybersquatting can also be considered illegal. This kind of cybersquatters are generally competitors in the market that the products of the original trademark users will enter. For example, Siemens' cybersquatting of Hisense trademark belongs to this type. Its general purpose is to prevent the products of enterprises from entering the market of domain name squatting countries, or to slow down the speed of trademark users' products entering the market of domain name squatting countries through domain name squatting, or to reduce the market space of original trademark users in domain name squatting countries in this way. This type of cybersquatting has the greatest impact on cybersquatters, because it is originally intended to create trade barriers through cybersquatting, so it is also the most troublesome to deal with; There is also a cybersquatting behavior for self-protection. For example, the agent of a product in country B found that the product trademark he represented was not registered in country B, and repeatedly negotiated with the owner of the product trademark in country A, but the other party refused to register, and registered the trademark of the product out of consideration for its own interests (such registration should be in good faith, otherwise it would be illegal); In other words, after company A acquired company B, it found that the trademark of company B was not registered in country A. In order to prevent speculators from registering first, company A registered the trademark first. Both of them are registered in good faith, which does no harm to the original trademark users and will be much simpler to handle. Therefore, reasonable trademark registration is a reasonable behavior, which can obtain corresponding economic benefits and promote economic development. Merchants should also pay attention to the use period of the trademark when registering the trademark, and renew it according to their actual needs when the trademark is about to expire. At the same time, for some well-known trademarks, trademark prevention measures are also necessary.