A Study On The Issues Of Media Trademark Right Protection

As the market economic system establishes, the industry property of media is gradually emerging, and the competitions among media grow more and more stiff. Of all the competitions, the competitions of brands are the most intense. To media, a brand is an important part of intangible assets and core competences, and trademarks are the carrier of brands. It's the best way to protect media brands by registering media trademarks for the right of trademarks. After assessing the value of trademarks, media can make profits using the assets of trademarks by investing, licensing or transferring. But for most media lack the awareness of protecting trademarks, the media and media brands are used for some "free riders" to be registered as other kinds of good or service trademarks, so that the media lose the intangible assets of trademarks. So, Chinese media have to restrain the "preemptive registrations", strengthen the sense of trademark protection, and take advantage of Trademark Law to protect media brands.This article is using the methods of Documents Analysis and Case Analysis to study on the issues of media trademark protection, and consists of four parts as follows:Part one is mainly introducing the importance of media trademarks in the media market competitions, highlighting the media trademarks and trademark rights on the legal significance combining with the features and characteristics of media. The media competitions are becoming the competitions of brands, and the media trademarks are the carrier of media brands. It is a must to transfer brand signs to registered trademarks to make the brands protected by the Trademark Law.Part two is mainly discussing the evaluating of media trademark value, taking the trademark value accessing of the "China Information World" trademark transfer case for example, and introducing the trademark value assessing process of media in details. After obtaining the excellent trademarks, in order to use them effectively, the media have to evaluate the trademarks. Assessing the value of media trademark reasonably could further enhance the protection of trademarksPart three is discussing how to protect the media trademark rights, for the phenomenon of so many media brands preemptively registered. In order to restrain the media trademarks preemptive registrations, media should register trademarks as early as possible, and the well-known media brands shall try to be determined as well-known trademarks. There are two types of relief measures after the media trademarks are preemptive registered. First, the media can file an opposition during the announcement period. Second, when the Trademark Law can not provide any protection, we can use the Law for Countering Unfair Competition to protect the media trademarks.Part four is introducing how to protect the domain names so called "trademark on line". At present, media are facing two ways of infringing the domain names called "cybersquatting" and "trademark cyberpiracy". If media involved in domain name disputes, they can resolve them by the means of: consultation by both parties; settlement of disputes by the specialized agencies and the use of judicial proceedings.To avoid losing the intangible assets, and restrain the preemptive registrations of media trademarks, this article is trying to study on the issues of media trademark protection. This article is introducing the media trademarks and trademark rights on the legal significance combining with the features and characteristics of their own, is discussing the importance of media trademarks in the media market competitions, is trying to do an exploratory study on the methods of evaluating the value of media trademarks, putting forward a more feasible approach, and illustrating the way to use the evaluating methods in practice, which acts as the innovation and feature of this article. But most importantly, on the basis of the previous studies, this article is providing some specific and feasible measures for the media which encountered with trademark preemptive registrations, and also putting forward the solutions for the "online trademark" infringements that media involved in the process of "on-line"—the disputes of domain name. I hope this article will play a forward role for future systematic research in this field.