Scent Marks Legal Research

Scent Marks is a brand-new subject in the field of trademark law. With the development of science and technology and the application of new business model, trademarks, as the product of commercial activities, have also developed from traditional visual ones to new types.Yet due to its specialty the protection of scent mark with respect to other types of trademarks is still faced with even more theoretical and practical difficulties. There is still no worldwide protection standard which reaches an accord. The Trademark Law of our county now takes a wait-and-see attitude towards this issue and correlative researches are confined to a certain degree. There are extremely rare documents that refer to scent marks. However, in face of our country's commercial marketing and the demands of the economical development, it is foreseeable that if or how scent should be protected by the Trademark Law should be faced and well-thought.Therefore, this essay takes the questioning and challenges which scent marks meets with in practice as a breaking-through point, discusses the reasons why scent marks is restricted during its development, seeks out its practical difficulties and problems, and thus lays the foundation of further discussion. Then, conducting a comparative study of the legislation and the practices on scent marks in foreign countries, this essay respectively analyses related cases and practices in the USA, Europe and Australia and through a view of comparative law analyses how these countries protect scent marks and their stands these countries took and thus borrows some ideas. At last, combining the analyses mentioned above and taking its practical development in our country, this essay, on thinking and discussing our country's examining guidelines on scent marks, offers its own examination guidelines on its distinctiveness, un-functionality and graphical representation of the trademark existing in the examining procedure, and hopes it may do some good to the development of the scent marks and trademark types in our country.Up to now, the examination and protection of scent marks is still controversial. Though it has obtained recognition and protection in some countries, scent marks that has been registered around the world is still like a drop in the ocean. Facing the various kinds of practical problems in its development, we cannot be overly optimistic and we should keep on exploring the questions in practice. But it is foreseeable, with the development of economy and the actual requirements of encouraging innovation, that scent marks will not be a mere passenger in the history of trademarks and, in some field, may be the most valuable brand logo an enterprise owns.Learning and absorbing from the successful practical experience in foreign countries, exploring the new types of trademark like the scent marks while keeping a foothold on our country's reality, and seeking an appropriate protection system will not only promote the new development of the legislation of trademark law in our country, but make our own special contribution as well while participating actively in creating a new international trademark legal protection system.