Trademark Agent 's Expert Responsibility

Trademark application activity, such as judgement on whether the application for the registration of trademark would be approved or not, is a kind of activity with strong professional. Aforementioned activities require plenty of professional knowledge and experience. As a result, in practice, a large number of enterprises and the market entity choose to hire an agent to handle the trademark the trademark related matters. On one side, along with our country’s economic development and social progress, domestic enterprises and entity are increasingly aware of the importance and economic value of the trademark for the development of enterprises; on the other hand, the domestic market is becoming open and open to foreign entities. A large number of foreign enterprises and companies have been or is being entered China’s market. According to relevant provisions of PRC Trademark Law, foreign enterprises or foreign citizens are not permitted to directly apply for trademark registration and trademark or other relevant administrative procedures and such applications by foreign entities or citizens are required to be conducted by entrusting a trademark agency. Aforesaid factors promote the vigorous development of China’s trademark agency industry. At present trademark agency market is being more and more strong. Top tier international law firms, such as Magic Circle Law Firms and White Shoes Law Firms, and small trademark agency companies are all involved in the trademark agency activities. The trademark agency market in China has a big scale now. But it is still a young and immature market. Lots of trademark agencies have improper acts in their practices. Only a few provisions provided in laws and regulation are in respect of the trademark proxy. The luck of laws and regulations causes the interests and rights of related person cannot be appropriately protected. This article discusses this issues and suggest to introduce professional liability system to regulate the trademark agencies. This article has three parts as follows:In part one of this article, the currently laws and regulations and concepts relating to trademark agencies and introduced. And a summary of related cases and an analysis of such cases are also contained in the part one. The theme of this part is to analyze issues of current legal system.In part two, the system and theory of professional liability is introduced. Professional liability is a kind of liability which shall be undertaken by expert. Professional liability system requires experts to undertake some more strict obligations due to the high requirements for professional knowledge and experiences in some industry. And experts have to bear professional liabilities when fail to duly perform aforementioned obligations. Trademark agency is a kind of expert and has its own characters. The introduction of professional liability system in the trademark agency market can deal with problems in practice. And the professional liability system also can match current legal regime. Part two is intends to analyze the feasibility and necessity of the introduction of professional liability system. In part three, this article introduces the obligations and corresponding liability of trademark agency under professional liability system. There are two kinds of professional liabilities: profession liabilities to the principal and to relevant third party. The two kinds of liabilities have different legal basis and contents. When such obligations are not duly performed by experts, they might be required to undertake professional liabilities. And the legal basis, tatbestand and content of two kinds of professional liabilities are also different.