How to prevent cybersquatting of trademarks? What are the methods?
1. How can trademarks prevent cybersquatting? What are the methods? 1, the market has not moved, and the trademark comes first. Before the newly developed goods enter the market, ensure that the trademarks used have obtained rights. 2. Defensive registration: According to the principle of "one commodity, one trademark, one application", a trademark with certain popularity can be registered defensively on similar or non-similar goods to avoid infringement by professional trademark speculators. 3. Strengthen trademark monitoring: enterprises should pay close attention to the trademark announcements issued by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, and if they find identical or similar trademarks, they should raise objections to the State Administration for Industry and Commerce in time; Trademark agencies should be entrusted to track and monitor the market and feed back the infringement information in time. Two. Forms of expression of registered trademarks (1) Registered unregistered trademarks registered with registered trademarks China's Trademark Law stipulates that if two or more applicants for trademark registration apply for registration with the same or similar trademarks on the same commodity or similar commodities, they shall make a preliminary examination of the trademarks applied for earlier and make an announcement, and reject the applications of others without making an announcement. If there is no objection or no objection is established within 3 months of the announcement period, registration shall be granted. China's Trademark Law does not give any exclusive right to unregistered trademark users. Where a trademark is used without registration, the user has no right to prevent others from using the same or similar trademark on the same commodity, service or similar commodity or service or to apply for prior registration. Only when the users of unregistered trademarks and users apply for registration on the same day, according to the current situation of trademark use and application for registration in China, the applicants who used earlier will be taken care of so that they can register. This scope is limited, and it cannot restrict others from applying for registration, nor can it violate the principle of applying first and then registering. Users of unregistered trademarks have the right to choose not to apply for registration of the trademarks they use; If he advertised a lot of unregistered trademarks he used but didn't apply for, or applied for trademark registration later than others on the same or similar goods or services, as a result, others applied for trademark registration first, which can only show that: 1, his independent decision led him to ignore one thing after another; 2. Weak awareness of trademark rights protection. Of course, this does not provide him with legal protection. In countries where the exclusive right to use a trademark is registered, as long as the business entity has a strong sense of trademark rights, there will be no preemptive registration of the trademark before or at the same time when applying for trademark registration. The view that all acts of preempting the registration of a trademark are illegal is essentially advocating the use of the exclusive right to use a trademark, thus fundamentally denying the system of exclusive right to use a registered trademark, which is contrary to China's Trademark Law. China Trademark Law Article 32 An application for trademark registration shall not damage the prior rights of others, nor shall it preempt the registration of a trademark that has been used by others and has certain influence by unfair means. Therefore, it is prohibited by law to conditionally confirm the preemptive registration of trademarks used by others. While adhering to the principle of registration first and application first, the law has made reasonable adjustments to the absolute principle of application first. It is emphasized that the application must be based on the principle of honesty first, and the trademark that has been used by others and has established reputation should not be stolen as its own trademark to apply for registration, which makes up for the defects of the absolute registration principle and prevents the occurrence of unfair situations in fact. (2) the right to register a registered trademark The right to register a registered trademark is a right determined by national laws. However, due to geographical and time constraints, a trademark is protected in one or several specific countries or regions, but it cannot be protected in countries or regions outside the registered country or region. This may cause Party A to register trademark A on B goods or services in country C. If Party A fails to register the same application in country D, it may happen that Party B applies for registration of trademark A or a trademark similar to trademark A on B goods or services or applies for registration in country D before Party A and gets approval. Although this kind of preemption trademark registration seems morally questionable, there is nothing wrong with legal registration. In the past, due to the relatively weak trademark awareness of China operators, the trademarks they owned in China and had a certain or good reputation in some countries and regions were pre-registered by others in that country or region, which led to the failure of China operators to use the original trademarks registered in China in that country or region and eventually withdrew from the market in that country or region; Or continue to use the trademark and occupy the market, but pay a high price to obtain the ownership of the trademark transferred by the other party; Others have to start a new stove. I have suffered losses in economic interests, but there is nothing I can do legally. However, with the development of China's market economy, it is becoming more and more common for some domestic enterprises and individuals to register foreign well-known trademarks in China first in order to seek economic benefits. (3) Registered well-known trademarks are more complicated than unregistered trademarks and registered non-well-known trademarks. After a well-known trademark is registered by others in other countries or regions, whether the trademark exclusive right of the original owner of the well-known trademark can be protected in that country or region ultimately depends entirely on the determination of the competent authorities of the country or region where protection is requested according to domestic laws. If the preemptive registration of others is justified, the original trademark owner will lose the ownership of the trademark within his jurisdiction and cannot be protected; On the other hand, if you think that the registration is improper, you can get protection. (IV) Conflict of Rights To solve the conflict of rights of different types of intellectual property rights, the existing laws have a basic principle, that is, the principle of protecting prior rights. This principle is the embodiment of the principle of fairness, honesty and credit in civil law, and it is specified in both patent law and trademark law. Judging from the current laws, regulations and rules, the rights and obligations arising from patent rights and trademark rights are stipulated by different laws, and there is no distinction between higher and lower, stronger and weaker. If there is a conflict of rights, the principle of protecting prior rights will apply. To sum up, in the face of various forms of trademark registration, only by clarifying their respective legal nature can we attack the existing trademark legal system head-on and safeguard the legal dignity and the legitimate interests of the parties. Objective Functional editors are open to the subject of trademark rights of most countries and international treaties in the world. 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 trademark registration 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. Trademark registration is an immoral behavior, which not only infringes on the rights and interests of the original trademark owner, but also disrespects the labor achievements of the workers. There are certain skills to prevent registered trademarks. While mastering the skills, I also want to warn the owners of registered trademarks not to know the law and break the law, otherwise they will be severely hit.