a trademark is a symbol that distinguishes products or services provided by different enterprises and is the face of enterprises. There are of course many factors for the success of an enterprise, but the role of trademark agent is indispensable in choosing what kind of trademark from the perspective of trademark strategy and strategy. The production of a trademark must first have a good idea, which is expressed in the form of graphics, characters, symbols or their combinations, which often requires people with various expertise to brainstorm. For example, in order to choose a satisfactory trademark, American Mobil Oil Company specially formed a research group composed of experts such as aestheticians, economists, psychologists, sociologists, linguists, commodity experts, trademark lawyers, etc., and studied the languages and customs of many countries in the world, as well as the registrability of various candidate trademarks in various countries in the world, which lasted for 6 years and cost 122 million US dollars. Finally, EXXON was determined from more than 1, candidate design schemes. It can be seen that a creative and unique trademark is equal to a huge wealth, and the formation of this huge wealth can not be separated from the hard work of the trademark agent to find gold in the sand.
when many trademark design schemes are collected, trademark agents have to do a series of screening work. The first step is to exclude the design scheme prohibited by the Trademark Law and the design scheme that is too simple and not significant. The second step is to search the registered or registered trademarks to preliminarily determine the registrability of each design scheme. This retrieval should be carried out not only in the category of the trademark or service item to be used, but also in the category of other goods or services that have been protected; It needs to be done not only at home, but also abroad. After careful search, trademark agents should also write a search report according to the search data, and put forward analysis opinions on the registrability of each trademark design for enterprise decision-making. Imagine, without the participation of trademark agents, no matter how many experts the enterprise invites, how much time it spends and how much money it consumes, and if its final trademark lacks registrability, the works produced by these huge investments, no matter how high their artistic value, can be said to be worthless as trademarks.
Trademark agents are experts in assisting enterprises to obtain trademark ownership
Trademark agents need to use a lot of specialized and skilled knowledge and experience in the process of assisting enterprises to obtain trademark ownership, in order to live up to the entrustment of the parties. After some applications for trademark registration are submitted to the Trademark Office, they have to go through correction procedures, examination opinions procedures, rejection review procedures or objection procedures, dispute procedures, improper registration procedures, etc., just like Guan Yunchang went through five hurdles and cut six generals. Even more, the process of obtaining individual trademark ownership is complicated and tortuous, just as the Monkey King protected Tang Priest from going to the Western Heaven to learn Buddhist scriptures and experienced eighty-one difficult. Trademark agents have to try their best. According to the statistics of the Trademark Office, in 1999, 124,786 new applications for trademark registration (excluding Madrid international registration) were made by the national trademark agency * *, and 2,724 were returned for correction, with a rejection rate of 16.61%, and some agencies had a rejection rate as high as 5%. Of course, this does not rule out that the new trademark agents are unskilled or some trademark agents are negligent, but a considerable part of it is caused by a skillful measure taken by the agents to make the clients get the application date as soon as possible in accordance with the principle of prior application stipulated in the Trademark Law.
even in the case of successfully obtaining trademark ownership, the hard work and wisdom of trademark agents are condensed. For example, when a foreign enterprise wants to apply for a registered trademark in China, the document is placed on the desk of a trademark agent, and the trademark agent must first confirm whether the application is still within the priority period; It is necessary to examine whether the documents are complete; Whether the trademark meets the requirements of the Trademark Law of China, and whether a certain part of the trademark pattern should be given up; We should also consider how to fill in the service items of goods in order to protect the rights and interests of the clients to the maximum extent; In addition, many trivial details can not be ignored. For example, whether the trademark pattern specifications meet the requirements, whether the trademark graphics and words are clear, and so on.
Trademark agents are trademark management consultants of enterprises and experts in resolving trademark disputes
In China, it is extremely common for an enterprise to own hundreds of registered trademarks, and it is not uncommon for an enterprise to own thousands of trademarks abroad. How to manage these registered trademarks in an orderly way and how to prevent trademark dilution in trademark use and advertising; How to sign a trademark license contract; Which trademarks and when they need to be renewed or changed; Check the trademark announcement regularly and find out in time that others are applying for registration of the same and similar trademarks as ours, so as to raise objections, disputes or improper registration applications in time according to different situations; How to establish a monitoring network to detect trademark infringement or trademark counterfeiting of others in time; What kind of remedies are used to solve trademark disputes with others, and so on. All these require the trademark agent to make suggestions for the enterprise, and to negotiate with the other party or complain to the relevant competent authorities on behalf of the enterprise.
Take trademark infringement cases as an example. At present, some enterprises invite civil servants from local industrial and commercial administrations to go abroad to assist in trademark infringement, and some enterprises set up anti-counterfeiting agencies to send their own employees to fight against counterfeiting. As far as the latter mode is concerned, I think it is correct for enterprises to set up special anti-counterfeiting institutions, but if we go further and send our own employees to fight against counterfeiting, it is worth rethinking. Confucius said, "Too much is not enough.". It is not only costly for enterprises to train a full-time anti-counterfeiting team every year, but also because of the uncertainty of the time of the case, it will inevitably lead to the waste of labor, thus increasing the burden on enterprises. On the one hand, entrusting trademark agents to crack down on counterfeiting is more professional, on the other hand, they can come at once, fight when they come, and retreat after the war, which fully embodies the principle of more, faster, better and cheaper. Entrepreneurs should carefully calculate this account. According to statistics, in recent years, about 8% of the annual trademark registration applications are represented by trademark agencies.
This year is the year when the new century meets the old. The Measures for the Administration of Trademark Agency in China have been implemented, and the revision of the Trademark Law is also being accelerated. With China's accession to the World Trade Organization approaching, China's reform and opening up has made greater strides. In this case, foreign investors should first consider the protection of their intellectual property rights in China when they enter the China market. Chinese enterprises go global and also require international protection of trademarks and other intellectual property rights. Therefore, we have reason to believe that a new era of trademark business has arrived, and trademark agents will certainly play a greater role in helping enterprises create gold-lettered signboards.