Research On The System Of Trademark Objection

Since the21st century, with Chinese companies keep growing, the commercial value of the trademarks owned by the companies is great. Trademarks as a kind of intellectual property are regarded as valuable asserts by an increasing number of companies. Moreover, with the increase of trademark applications and registrations, there are more and more disputes involving trademarks. Sometimes, an application for a trademark registration may infringe upon another existing right, or violate prohibitive provisions of the trademark law and the implementing regulations of the trademark law. Under the existing institution of the trademark law, the trademark opposition proceedings and the trademark dispute adjudication proceedings are relief approaches to solve the foregoing problems. Furthermore, the two kinds of relief approaches are respectively the proceeding prior to or after the approval of the registration of a trademark.Theoretically, even if trademark is approved for registration, we still can cancel such a registered trademark by the trademark dispute proceeding. However, it is time consuming to wait for the trademark review and adjudication board’s ruling to cancel the registered trademark.There are two main reasons. First, there is no trial time limit in the trademark dispute adjudication proceeding. Second, there are not enough examiners to solve their backlogs of the trademark cases. So a pragmatic approach to deal with the problem is to make the best use of the trademark opposition proceeding. This paper focuses on the research of the trademark opposition regulations. The trademark law provides that any person may, within three months from the date of publication, file to oppose a trademark application that has been published after a preliminary examination and approval. If any opposition is filed in this period, the opposition proceeding will start.The trademark opposition regulations are enacted for the purpose of providing the opportunity for the public to present their views regarding any application for the trademark registration, so that any application for trademark registration can be supervised by the relevant public and the approval of the trademark registration can be in conformity with the trademark law. However, the trademark opposition regulations under the existing trademark law still have many inadequacies, which should be further improved and perfected. For example, any person may file to oppose a trademark application under the current law. However, whether any person can file to oppose a trademark opposition? The current trademark law does not give the clear provisions. For another example, what is the scope of grounds in the trademark opposition? The current trademark law does not give the clear provisions either. Since the provisions regarding the trademark opposition are too abstract to be operated, in judicial practice legal issues regarding the trademark opposition rely on the judicial discretion. There inadequacies, which leads to legal disputes, should be found in time and be improved. From a typical case, this paper analyzes the inadequacies of the trademark opposition regulations. Combined with the relevant regulations in the draft of the trademark law and the European community trademark regulation, this paper analyzes and sets forth the inadequacies needed to be improved. Starting from a typical case, this paper introduces the fact and judicial reasoning of the case. The highlight of this paper is that the author found and set forth an inadequacy in the judicial reasoning. The inadequacy directly leads to a mistaken judgment regarding whether or not DA Jiale Company is eligible to file a trademark opposition. This paper further set forth that if a trademark is related to thereof copyright, when a company transfers its trademark, we should regard registered owner grant the relevant copyright right to the assignee by the implied license. From the court’s findings of fact and judicial reasoning, the judge in this case seemed not to notice this fact at that time, so the judge made a mistaken judgment. This paper reminds us that we should enhance our understanding of the trademark opposition system, and the regulations regarding the trademark opposition under the current trademark law are not clear and concrete enough, and should be amended further.This paper is divided into five chapters:the first chapter explains the Da Jiale case and analyzes the case; the second chapter introduces theoretical problems regarding trademark opposition? the third chapter the regulations regarding trademark opposition under the European community trademark regulation; the fourth chapter discusses the relevant regulations under the draft of the Chinese trademark law; the fifth chapter is a conclusion.