Legal Regulation Of The Conflict Between The Name Right And The Trademark Right Of The Public

In our country, with the rapid development of economy in recent years, the conflict between the right of public figure’s name and trademark rights increases constantly. For example, there was "Cai Lan" trademark registered by Li Ping before, and then the Chinese star Yao Ming appealed to "Yao Ming Era" infringement as well as the United States star Michael Jordan complained "Jordan" trademark infringement in China. As "Xie Tingfeng" ant diarrheal, "Liu Dehua" white out and a series of cases of infringement occurs, it makes the conflict between the right of public figure’s name and trademark rights became the legal issues and social focus gradually. We can say that under the planned economy, this phenomenon is unimaginable. Because in the era of planned economy, production tasks and sales plans are carried out in accordance with the instructions and the trademark is merely a tool used by the competent authority to manage commodity production and sales and it will neither bring about economic benefits and social value nor being regarded as a kind of intellectual property right enjoyed by the enterprises. Even if a trademark is the same as or similar to the name of the public figure, it will not infringe on the interests of the public figure either. However, under the condition of market economy, as trademark is an important carrier of the outstanding enterprise reputation, the additional value brought by it is obvious, which fostered those enterprises who don’t want to gain the recognition of market quickly through long-term efforts preregistered and counterfeited the public figure’s name and these behaviors have become inevitable choices. Moreover, these kinds of behaviors will trigger the dispute between the right of public figure’s name and the protection of the interests of the trademark rights.In this paper, the main body is divided into four chapters. In chapter one, based on the clarify of a series of concepts, such as name and the right of the name, public figures and the right of their names, the trademark and the trademark rights, and on the analyze of the harm of infringing the right of public figure’s name and the evaluation of "Cai Lan v. Li Ping" case, the author is trying to put forward several important questions raised from the protection the right of public figure’s name and the conflict of the protection of trademark rights. In chapter two, according to the problems that put forward in the first chapter, the author profoundly analyzed the causes of the conflict between the two rights emphatically from three aspects, the different forms, specialty of the for-profit market and the defects of the legal system, and explained the reason why we should take special processing principle when there are conflicts between the right of public figure’s name and the right of trademark. In chapter three, compared with the national legislation of protection the right of the public figure’s name of some countries, which are in a much better situation, such as United States, Britain and Germany, the author carried on a comprehensive review to the law which can be rely on, focusing on the present situation of legislation in our country, especially when the right of public figure’s name has not been acknowledged explicitly. In chapter four, the author puts forward some relevant suggestions from the angle of legislation on the case of how to deal with the conflict between the right of public figure’s name and trademark rights in our country.