Study On The Elements Of Trademark Infringement

Trademark infringement refers to acts infringing upon the exclusive right to use registered trademark, and causing damages to the rights and interests of the trademark owners. The current trademark law of China providing some specific trademark infringement acts is devoid of general provision on the elements of trademark infringement, which leads to the diversities of understanding of trademark infringement and the difficulties in application of law, and which brings about such problems as"similar cases different results"while dealing with new types of infringement. This paper holds that explicit provisions on the elements of trademark infringement be added to the trademark law which is under its third amendment.Basing upon the current legal provisions, the judicial practices and academic research fruits, and by reference to relevant international treaties and the experiences of other countries and regions, the author of this paper believers that there should be the following elements of trademark infringement: (1) acts done without the permission of the trademark owner; (2) using signs in the course of trade; (3) using identical or similar signs in identical or similar goods or services; (4) acts causing the likelihood of confusion. There are five chapters in this paper: Chapter I is on an Introduction to trademark infringement, and Chapter II to Chapter V discuss the four elements of trademark infringement respectively. Besides, this paper also studies the hot issues in practice, such as trademark infringement in OEMs, parallel imports, and keywords searches on the internet, in combination of the study on the elements of trademark infringement in relevant chapters...