People's Daily Online: Squat Trademark with Malicious Intention Would Be Rejected Definitely
At present, a large number of malicious squatting cases occur on the market in violation of the principle of honesty and credit, malicious clinging to the reputation of other people's trademarks, preemption of higher-profile trademarks, infringing upon prior rights of others, possession of public resources and repeated cybersquatting.
In this regard, the manager of Trademark Office said: Facing the increasingly large-scale and professional trademark squat, the Trademark Office will summary the typical malicious application cases by optimizing the examination of the sub-document process. In the examination session, the trademark application that has obvious subjective malicious intention would be strictly examined and rejected. Specifically, it shows as the following four kinds of conditions:
1. Reject the application that maliciously cling other's goodwill and squat a higher-profile trademark.
For example: Weihai Disu Trade Ltd applied for more than 300 trademarks, and all of them contain other’s prior registered high-profile marks; Natural person Lin Hao applied for more than 200 marks, and they are highly similar with some famous mark such as Huawei, Wechat,etc, and designated use on similar goods/services. UK ARTHUR BRAND MANAGEMENT CO.,LTD. applied for more than 400 marks, basically completely copy other people's original strong, high-profile trademarks in non-similar goods and services.
All of the above situations have intentions of clinging to the goodwill of others. which violate the principle of good faith, it is easy to cause adverse social impact. Trademark Office will dismiss it in accordance with the law.
2. A large number of applications cybersquatting generic names and industry terminology, which are occupy public resources with improper intentions shall be rejected.
For example: Shanghai Junchang Information Technology Co.,Ltd. and related interest community registered administrative divisions’ (below the county level) name as trademark nearly 5000. The above-mentioned application has the intention of illegally occupying public resources, disrupting the normal order of trademark registration and easily causing adverse social impact would be rejected.
3. Register celebrities names as trademark with malicious intention will be strictly examined and rejected.
For example: Jinjiang McGrady Shoe&Garment Trading Co., Ltd. register the name of the basketball star transliteration as a trademark without permission or authorization will be strictly examined and rejected.
4. For the condition of same company maliciously repeated cybersquatting, and submit continuous applications, will be strict examine and rejected reference to the previous objection, invalid case.
For example: Natural person Wang Shuben applied many well-known brands and similar trademarks like “美的公主”“容声家宝”， obvious intend to copy, imitate other famous marks. This action belongs to the hoarding behavior, and it does not have any legitimacy, in violation of the principle of public order, and they will be declared invalid. Thereafter, this applicant repeatedly apply for the same marks. Reference to prior invalidation grounds, Trademark office found that they belong to the behavior of same applicant repeated squatting behavior. All his applications be rejected.
In addition, the Trademark Office also focused on dealing with a number of cases of malicious hoarding, malicious clinging to other trademarks’ goodwill, to deter this kind of illegal register action.
For example: Guangzhou Tianyi Leather Ltd apply for a large number of logos which are identical or similar with well-known companies in fashion industry, , involving a number of categories of goods. Guangzhou 4399 Information Technology Ltd applied for more than 9000 marks, among them, 210 was opposed by others, and Trademark Office handled 39 oppositions as a whole.
Above-mentioned applications runs counter to the principle of good faith and disrupts the normal trademark registration order. Trademark Office handle the aforesaid opposition cases together. According to the relevant provisions of the Trademark Law, it makes the decision that many marks will not be registered.
As data show that in 2017, 27,000 cases of trademark infringement were investigated, involving an amount of 333 million yuan and 443 million yuan of fines, creating a favorable environment for trademark brand competition.
Source: China Daily Online