Stereoscopic Trademark Legal Protection

With the development of market economy, as one of the members of numeroustrademarks, stereoscopic trademark entered public field. Meanwhile, three-dimensionaltrademarks’ issues gradually attracted public’s attention. The main problem is the differencebetween the three-dimensional trademark and the plane trademark. The two-dimensionaltrademark is composed of words, pictures or color, while the three-dimensional trademarkhas its special features. It is not only the general mark completely separated fromcommodities, and it can be the shape of the product itself, the commodities’ package and apart of the commodity. Therefore, stereoscopic trademark is different from the planetrademark. We encountered obstacles in how to identify the three-dimensional mark’slegality, distinctiveness and non-functionality, and how to determine two stereoscopictrademarks are identical or similar.In the first part of the paper, the author explained the three-dimensional trademark andgot an overview of it. After introducing the origin of the stereoscopic trademark andanalyzing three-dimensional trademarks’ legal protection in foreign countries, in the secondchapter of this paper, firstly the author gave us the background on the stereoscopictrademark’s registration in China, and then she discussed conditions of the three-dimensionaltrademark should be follow. The conditions include legality, distinctiveness andnon-functionality. Furthermore, the non-functionality contains the technical functionality andthe aesthetic functionality. The third part of the paper, the author wrote from a confusiontheory perspective. She combined with some principles, they are the overall comparison, themain part observation and comparing two trademarks respectively. Through case studymethod, this article discussed how to determine two stereoscopic trademarks are identical orsimilar. Therefore, in order to conveniently enforce the trademark law, this paper concludesthat if two trademarks are sufficient to cause the relevant public confusion or the possibilityto misidentification, we can determine they are identical or similar.