There is a mineral water company that wants to register a trademark. What should it do now to register a trademark? Are there any regulations on the trademark registration process and time? The editor has brought it to you? Company registered trademark ?Relevant knowledge, there may be what you need. What are the regulations on the trademark registration process and time for mineral water companies?
1. Design? You can entrust our company or design by yourself before applying for trademark registration. The following points should be paid attention to when designing a trademark: (1) Originality, that is, the design of the trademark must be innovative; on the one hand, it must meet the requirements of distinctiveness, and on the other hand, a creative trademark can easily expand the popularity of the product and quickly occupy the market. (2) The name of the trademark should avoid being associated with the function of the product. (3) The design of the trademark should highlight the theme and be reasonably laid out.
2. Inquiry? Trademark inquiry usually refers to an inquiry about trademark information conducted by a trademark registration applicant before applying to register a trademark, in order to understand whether there are any prior trademark rights that may conflict with the trademark he is applying for. . It takes a long time for a trademark to be applied for and approved for registration. If the trademark registration application is rejected, on the one hand, the trademark registration fee will be lost, and on the other hand, it will take longer to reapply for a registered trademark, and it is still unknown whether the re-application will be approved for registration. Therefore, it is best for applicants to conduct a trademark search to understand the status of prior rights before applying to register a trademark. There are two types of inquiry services: one is internal inquiry service; the other is agency government inquiry service, which takes 7-14 working days.
3. Application? Submit the trademark registration application documents to the Hong Kong Intellectual Property Department.
4. Acceptance? After the Hong Kong Intellectual Property Department receives the trademark registration application materials, it will give an application number and issue an acceptance notice. It will take about one week.
5. Review? Trademark review is divided into two processes: formal review and substantive review. Formal examination means that before examining the application, the Trademark Registry will examine the application form and all attachments in detail to see whether the required parts of the form have been completed, whether the relevant information is correct, and whether the required information is incomplete. If everything is in order, the application process will enter the next stage (substantive examination stage). After the substantive examination is completed to check the deficiencies of the application and confirm that all the information is complete, the Trademark Registry will check the trademark records to determine whether other merchants have registered or applied for registration of the same or similar goods or services. 's trademark. The Trademark Registry will also check whether the trademark concerned complies with the registration requirements stipulated in the Trademark Ordinance. If approved, the application process will enter the next stage (the gazette announcement stage).
6. Announcement? After the Trademark Registry approves the application, it will be announced in the Hong Kong Intellectual Property Gazette for a period of three months. If no one raises any objection, the trademark can be successfully registered.
7. Registration? If there is no objection to the trademark announcement or the objection is ruled untenable, the registration is successful. Under normal circumstances, it takes about 6 months to obtain the registration certificate. After successful registration, it will be valid for 10 years and can be renewed on time six months before expiration. Reasons for the conflict between the mineral water company’s trademark rights and design patent rights
Theoretically, trademarks and designs should be two fields of rights that do not overlap with each other. Trademarks and designs are commodities. Or different aspects of the product, each has its own track of presentation, and should be developed in parallel within their respective fields.
However, in practice, both trademarks and designs are used on the outer packaging of goods. When the flat design does not contain content prohibited from registration by trademark law, such as the common name or graphics of the goods, , the main functions, uses, raw materials, etc. of the goods, the design can be approved for trademark registration, that is, the design patent can be a registered trademark under certain conditions. At the same time, in order to achieve the purpose of counterfeiting other people's trademarks, trademark infringers mainly imitate the appearance of products whose trademarks are not prominent. For example, when a trademark registrant enlarges and uses the trademark so that it becomes an integral part of the product's appearance, the infringer's infringement behavior includes counterfeiting the product's trademark and product design. Therefore, when the trademark right and appearance of the same product are When design patents belong to different rights holders, trademark rights and design patent rights will overlap.
Generally speaking, there are two main situations when trademark rights and design patent rights conflict:
1. When a trademark registration applicant uses a design for which someone else has obtained exclusive rights in his trademark Design, and if the trademark is registered without the permission of the design patentee, the conflict between the trademark right and the design patent right will inevitably occur, that is, the design patentee believes that the trademark registrant has infringed upon its legitimate prior rights, and the trademark The registrant believes that his trademark rights are legal and does not infringe upon the design rights of the design patentee.
2. If the design patent applicant uses words and graphics that are identical or similar to others’ registered trademarks in his design patent rights, and without the permission of the trademark registrant, the design will be granted a patent. After the right is obtained, the problem of conflict between the design patent right and the trademark right will inevitably occur, that is, the trademark registrant believes that the design patentee has infringed on its legitimate prior trademark rights, and the design patentee believes that his design patent right is It is legal and does not infringe the legitimate trademark rights of the trademark registrant.
(1) Rights conflicts arising from different conditions for the creation and elimination of rights
Patent law and trademark law have different legislative purposes, and the creation and elimination of rights protected by them The conditions are also different. The patent law requires that the design for which patent rights are granted should be new, that is, if the design has been publicly published or used before the filing date, it can be revoked according to law. On the contrary, it cannot be revoked due to public publication or use after the filing date. The Trademark Law requires that a registered trademark cannot infringe the prior rights of others, otherwise the registered trademark can be revoked, but the registered trademark cannot be revoked based on the subsequent rights of others. It can be deduced from the above provisions that if the design has not been authorized before the trademark application date or the trademark has not been announced before the design application date, neither the registered trademark nor the design patent can be revoked, which leads to the conflict of rights between the design patent and the registered trademark. .
(2) Laws and regulations have different provisions on the review system of trademark rights and design patent rights
Due to the different provisions of the trademark law and the patent law on the competent authorities and review systems, resulting in There is a phenomenon that some trademarks and designs are authorized when they should not be authorized, which may lead to conflicts of rights. The China Patent Office is responsible for accepting and examining patent applications, and granting patent rights; the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce is responsible for accepting and examining trademark applications, and approving registrations. However, my country adopts a preliminary examination system for design patent applications, that is, there is no examination of whether the design is new. The requirements for trademark novelty are different from those for designs, and the main requirements are that the new trademark must be consistent with the prior trademark. Without conflict, it is impossible to examine whether it infringes upon the prior rights of others, which may lead to situations where patent rights or trademark rights should not be granted, and a conflict of trademark and design patent rights may arise. Some of these rights conflicts are unintentional. But some are caused intentionally by the parties involved. For example, some people use the design to apply for a design for someone else’s existing registered trademark without conducting substantive examination. Others use the design patent rights that others already own cannot be discovered during the trademark examination process. , thereby illegally obtaining trademark rights. Once a legitimate rights holder is sued for infringement, the illegally obtained patent or trademark rights will be used as a defense against the legitimate rights holder.
(3) The law does not provide for relevant issues or the provisions are unclear or the provisions are unreasonable
According to the relevant provisions of my country’s Trademark Law and Patent Law, design patents It usually takes several months for the application to be approved, but the trademark only becomes effective from the date of approval of registration. There is an objection period of nearly three months when applying for trademark registration. Applicants for infringing design patents may take advantage of this "time difference" to obtain approval earlier than the trademark application. Therefore, the rights of the trademark designer may still be maliciously infringed.
In addition, the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce has formulated the "On Handling the Exclusive Rights of Trademarks and Design Patent Rights" in response to the frequent conflicts between trademark rights and design patent rights. Opinions on Conflict Issues. Although this provision plays a certain role in resolving the conflict of rights between trademarks and designs to a certain extent, it is also conducive to resolutely cracking down on counterfeiting of registered trademarks and trademark infringements. However, can the conflict of rights between the two be resolved overall and fundamentally? The author believes that this is worthy of discussion.
On the one hand, these regulations are often only departmental documents with a low legal level and generally do not have the force of law; on the other hand, these regulations were only formulated based on the rights disputes related to trademark rights and design patent rights at that time, which meant that they were There are provisions on conflicts of rights between two-dimensional trademarks and designs. Now, my country’s new trademark law has included three-dimensional trademarks and color combination trademarks within the scope of legal protection. If there is a conflict of rights between a three-dimensional trademark and a design or a color combination trademark and a design, When the rights conflict, can this provision still be applied and is it retroactive?
(4) Other reasons
In addition to the above three reasons, trademark rights and design patents There are other reasons why rights conflicts occur. First, because the subjects determined by trademark rights and design patent rights are different, there is a lack of communication between them when confirming rights. If the trademark owner has applied for a registered trademark for a color combination, and at the same time another person applies for a design patent for the same or similar color combination. At this time, two rights subjects are created on the same color combination. In this case, neither of the two rights subjects can use the prior right to oppose the other's rights. If the two rights holders do not negotiate, they cannot Avoid disputes over trademark rights and external design patent rights. Second, due to public legal concepts. For example, a company applies for a registered trademark with a certain graphic, three-dimensional logo or color combination, but does not realize that these graphics, three-dimensional logo or color combination are novel and suitable for industry, and fails to apply for a design patent in time. Some companies deliberately use these graphics, three-dimensional logos or color combinations before the rights holders apply for design patents, which leads to disputes between trademark rights and design patent rights. Although this situation can be fought with the prior right of trademark rights, if the company can have more legal concepts, it should be said that this conflict of rights can be completely avoided, and some unnecessary losses can also be avoided.
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