How to improve the awareness of preventing trademark squatting? First of all, mainland enterprises should strengthen their awareness of trademark protection and conduct a correct market assessment of trademarks that already have a certain degree of popularity in the mainland. Communicate with your trademark lawyer in a timely manner and make early judgments on countries and regions where squatting is likely to occur. In addition, attention should also be paid to non-key business countries and regions to improve the ability to predict market prospects in advance. As far as economic conditions permit, apply to register your own trademarks in countries and regions with relatively active economies, geographically adjacent countries and regions, or countries and regions where business may be developed. This is also the basis of prevention. Furthermore, we should consider conducting trademark surveillance in key countries and regions and take prompt legal measures once squatting is discovered.
Secondly, companies should also pay attention to retaining and archiving evidence of trademark use to facilitate the production of evidence in the event of disputes.
1. Apply for trademark registration as early as possible
Article 29 of my country’s Trademark Law stipulates: Two or more trademark applicants shall register for the same product or similar products. If you apply for registration with an identical or similar trademark, the trademark that was applied for first will be preliminarily reviewed and announced; if you apply on the same day, the trademark that was first used will be preliminarily reviewed and announced, and the applications of others will be rejected and will not be announced. ?This means that trademark registration should be started early. The principle of first-to-file trademark registration will not be used because the applicant is a well-known enterprise that is widely known to the public.
2. Appropriate expansion of the scope of trademark registration
In addition to trademark registration involving goods and service trademarks in categories and extended industry categories, appropriate defensive trademark registration is also required. Many core brands implement The practice of registering all categories is worth learning from. Although it requires a certain amount of investment, full-class registration can provide trademarks with "iron barrel" protection. It is the most effective means to completely avoid preemptive registration by others, ensure corporate brand significance, and enhance brand value.
Register names, abbreviations, icons, sub-brands, etc. with intellectual property characteristics as trademarks, and conduct appropriate defensive registrations, promptly expand the scope of trademark protection, and build trademark firewalls, which are often trademark registrations. ideal state of protection. But in fact, most companies' trademark protection work is not in place. Once a trademark is registered by others, remedial measures must be taken promptly to minimize losses.
3. Don’t miss the opportunity for trademark opposition
Trademark registration requires a series of statutory procedures such as submission of application documents, formal review, substantive review, preliminary review announcement, and registration announcement. In our country, the national authority with the power to examine and approve trademark registration is the State Trademark Office. However, Article 30 of the Trademark Law stipulates that anyone may raise objections to a preliminary approved trademark within three months from the date of announcement. . If there is no objection at the expiration of the announcement period, the registration will be approved, a trademark registration certificate will be issued, and the announcement will be made. ?This means that seizing the opportunity for objection is an opportunity that companies cannot miss to prevent the registered trademark from being approved for registration. Therefore, after learning that others have preemptively registered a trademark, you should promptly consult a professional trademark agency regarding the objection, and immediately submit an objection application and relevant evidence materials after the preliminary announcement.
Enterprises and institutions usually do not assign dedicated personnel to regularly browse the Trademark Office announcement information, so it is easy to miss objection opportunities. Therefore, it has become a necessary measure for enterprises to deal with trademark squatting by entrusting a professional trademark agency to conduct comprehensive monitoring of their trademarks. An excellent trademark agency can not only grasp the trademark announcement information at the first time, but also organize and prepare professional and persuasive opposition materials. The success rate of opposition will of course be greatly improved.
4. Strive to create well-known trademarks and strengthen protection
Well-known trademarks refer to trademarks that are widely known to the relevant public in China and enjoy a high reputation. In view of the fact that well-known trademarks are well-known, have a wide range of influence, and have considerable commercial value, my country has implemented special protection for well-known trademarks in accordance with relevant international conventions.
Article 13 of the current "Trademark Law" stipulates: If a trademark applied for registration for the same or similar goods is a copy, imitation or translation of someone else's well-known trademark that has not been registered in China, and is likely to cause confusion, it will not be registered. and its use is prohibited. If a trademark applied for registration for different or dissimilar goods is a copy, imitation or translation of a well-known trademark already registered in China by others, misleading the public and causing possible damage to the interests of the registrant of the well-known trademark, registration will not be granted and use will be prohibited.
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This means that if a company can identify a trademark application as a well-known trademark through administrative or judicial channels, even if the trademark has not been registered, it has the right to prohibit others from registering and using similar trademarks for the same or similar goods. ; If it is determined that a well-known trademark has been registered before, you can not only enjoy the above rights of unregistered well-known trademarks, but also have the right to prevent others from registering similar trademarks in the scope of different or similar goods and services.