Well-known Trademark Laws

Trademarks have at least 4 functions:indicating the source of goods or services, guaranteeing their quality, advertising, and smoothing the functioning of the market. Among these, the source function is trademark's basic function, from which the other functions derived. Protecting trademarks, including well-known ones, is to facilitate their performance.To determine whether a trademark is well-known, is to find the fact that to what extent the trademark used for a specific goods or service is known to a specific sector of the public in a certain region at a specific time. Because every case is different from others, the facts about a trademark's fame should be examined independently.The general rules of trademark protection, including trademark territoriality and trademark specialty, shall be applied to the protection of a well-known trademark. Whether to vest trademark right in a mark with neither local registration nor local use for the only reason that it is well known by a specific group of local people shall be considered prudently, especially when our country is socially and economically lagging behind the developed ones.The status about a trademark's fame is a matter of fact. Whereas, whether to protect it as being claimed is a matter of law. Finding related facts is a prerequisite for the application of law. There is no reason to arbitrarily refuse to find the status of a trademark's fame. But the trademark right granted due to its fame must be consistent with the type of goods of services and the geographic area where its fame exists.For China has very large territory and population, and various groups of people have significant differences in consuming capabilities and habits, normally, trademark right granted for fame should not cover all classes of goods or services, and should not cover the whole territory of the nation even in one classification.