Beijing May 1st International Intellectual Property Solution, to see whether the provided trademark samples are words or graphics. The main elements of common trademarks are words (Chinese and English), graphics (including other foreign languages) and the combination of these elements (note: it is difficult to register three-dimensional trademarks and color trademarks, so this article will not discuss them). Trademarks composed of words, such as word composition, word (word, language) meaning, word (word) sound, word (word) composition form and writing style, play a major role in identification and are easy to understand, call and distinguish, so the registrability of word mark is easy to determine. As a mother tongue, Chinese is more certain.

However, the graphics that can constitute a trademark are very extensive. China's Trademark Office classifies all elements (Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin, English) that can't be intuitively recognized as words as graphics, ranging from simple geometric graphics to complex patterns and pictures, with exquisite visual appearance, unlimited room for change, and obvious visual advantages. It is precisely because of the complexity of graphic composition types that how to determine whether there is a prior trademark that is approximately in conflict with the applied graphic trademark has become a difficult problem. Therefore, in 1973, the World Intellectual Property Organization formulated the Vienna Agreement on the International Classification of Graphic Elements of Trademarks, which divided the graphics used in trademarks into 29 categories, 144 subcategory and 1887 subcategory.

However, with the ever-changing graphic expression and composition, many graphics also have the characteristics of several types of graphic elements, which makes it impossible for everyone's intuitive feelings and subjective judgments to be different, or even worlds apart. Even among the examiners of the Trademark Office, this judgment of graphic attributes is a common phenomenon, and sometimes the same examiner will have differences at different times. This problem is quite obvious in the division of graphic elements of all graphic trademarks by the Trademark Office. Because there are actually many ways to divide a graphic trademark, although the Trademark Office has long been aware of this problem, and it will not be easy to change the division of graphic elements in the long run, this difference cannot be fundamentally eliminated. When examining graphic trademarks, examiners also have some problems, such as how to understand the attribute characteristics of the inquired graphics, the elements of approximate trademarks before retrieval, and how to identify graphic approximations. Therefore, there are obvious individual differences in review scores. In addition, the graphic trademarks in the trademark database of the Trademark Office are classified according to the Vienna Agreement. In particular, there are thousands of trademark graphics on an attribute element of some geometric figures in popular categories. If there are other attributes of geometry, the workload of searching and querying can be imagined. Therefore, the differences in the understanding of graphic classification, negligence caused by visual fatigue, omission caused by work inertia and subjective differences in graphic similarity may be the most uncertain factors in graphic trademark examination. Even the examiners of the Trademark Office can hardly avoid this phenomenon, let alone ordinary trademark agents.

Trademark owners who have many years' experience in trademark agency should know that the time for the Trademark Office to examine graphic trademarks is generally longer than that in word mark, and the results of the examination are far more controversial than that in word mark. In the practice of graphic trademark registration application, most of the cited trademarks rejected by the Trademark Office are unexpected. It is not surprising to know the reason, which is the normal result of the uncertain factors of the graphic trademark itself.