The trademark of each industry has its own emphasis in the industry. Once these key points are involved, the Trademark Office and the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board will generally reject your trademark application!
Recently, a trademark of "Zhongnong Kangbi Selenium" was rejected when it was examined by the Trademark Office.
What's wrong with the name of this trademark?
It turned out to be because of a word "selenium"!
The applicant of the trademark is a biotechnology company, and the registered trademark is "Egg dairy products; 29 kinds of goods such as fruit preserves.
Therefore, the Trademark Office and the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board believe that the disputed trademark contains the word "selenium", which is likely to make the relevant public think that the raw material of the commodity contains the nutritional element "selenium" needed by the human body, thus misunderstanding the raw material of the commodity, which constitutes the situation stipulated in Item (7) of Paragraph 1 of Article 10 of the Trademark Law.
Item (7) of the first paragraph of Article 1 of the Trademark Law: A product that is deceptive to the quality or origin of the product and easily misleads the public shall not be registered as a trademark!
So how can we avoid the trademark being identified as deceptive?
1. Trademarks should not deceive or mislead the public.
So, how do we understand "the masses"?
In the current judicial practice, it is generally believed that the "public" stipulated in this paragraph refers to the "relevant public".
Compared with the public, the criterion of deception is whether the relevant public is prone to misidentification, which avoids the possibility of losing some signs as trademarks for use and registration because of the low threshold of deception.
Whether a trademark is deceptive or not does not need to consider the subjective will of the trademark applicant when judging.
Even if the applicant claims that the trademark has no practical significance, it is not used to explain the relevant attributes of goods or services. As long as the trademark is objectively easy to lead to misunderstanding by the relevant public, it will constitute the situation stipulated in Item (7) of Paragraph 1 of Article 10 of the Trademark Law.
2, the registration of trademarks should also consider the relevant categories.
If "Zhongnong Kangbi Selenium" is registered in the 25th category, that is, clothing, the deception of trademarks may not be elegant!
"Deception" refers specifically to the fact that the words and graphics of the trademark logo conceal the authenticity of the goods used in the logo in terms of quality, main raw materials, function, use or origin, which is enough to make the public have a wrong understanding of the authenticity of the goods.
So to judge whether it is deceptive, we should combine the trademark logo with the goods or services specified by the trademark!
3. Taking this case as an example, the trademark of the lawsuit is "Zhongnong Kangbi Selenium", in which "Selenium" is an essential nutrient element for animals.
The disputed trademark is used in Class 29 "Eggs; Dairy products; Commodities such as "fruit preserves" are easy to make the relevant public think that the raw materials of commodities contain the nutritional element "selenium" needed by the human body, and thus have a wrong understanding of the raw materials of commodities.
Therefore, trademark litigation is deceptive.