On Unregistered Trademarks Legislation To Protect

While the modem market-oriented economy results in more plentiful unregistered trademark. In response to such a social demand, it is essential to establish a rigorous unregistered trademark protection system to safeguard fair and justifiable market competition.More than a pure mark of commodity, trademark is an intangible property to maintain forever customer relationship. It is the function of mediation or bridge that makes trademark valuable in competition. The exclusive right of trademark owner makes it able to monopoly customer relationship since the owner can prevent its rivals from selling its commodities and/or service. The indivisible relationship between trademark and competition makes the trademark infringement an unfair competition. Due to the trademark's function of competition, trademark used to be protected by the competition.We discuss the follows issues: the definition of unregistered trademark, the justifications of using unregistered trademark, the difficulty of protecting unregistered trademark, the status quo of unregistered trademark protection in the Anglo-American law system and in the Common Law System, and some legislation advice an unregistered trademark protection in China. Therefore, establishing unregistered trademark protection system servers both to maintain orderly and fair market competition and to realize true fairness. Unregistered trademark protection is supplement to trademark law.Because of the deferent tenet between registered and unregistered trademark, it is better to protect unregistered trademark in unfair competition law. The law should grant the first user to legitimately use any unregistered trademark in areas where such trademark is publicly known. The trademark users should be granted the legal interest by the unfair competition law allowing the first users who do not register the trademark to use their unregistered trademark within its publicly known areas, and granting them the right of petition to prohibit others from registering the trademark in advance and from counterfeiting the trademarks in the areas of their fame.The paper include five chapters : chapter one analyzing the characteristic of trademark. As a basic factor in business transaction, all business activities are applied to create and maintain customer relationships. And the purpose of companies' competition is to gain more customers. Trademark bridges the gap between customers and trader. The second chapter discusses the existence of unregistered trademark can be contributed both to principle of voluntary in trademark registry and to the coincidence of registered and unregistered trademark in identifying the origin of commodities .The third chapter discuss the status quo of unregistered trademark protection in the Anglo-American law system and in the Common law System. The chapter four discuss the justifications of using unregistered trademark, the difficulty of protecting unregistered trademark .The chapter five is about some legislation advice an unregistered trademark protection in China.