Case Study On The Judgment Of Generic Names Of Goods

The core value of trademark is significance, which means a trademarkon goods can signify the source of goods. This is a fundamental distinctionbetween trademark and the generic name of goods. The latter indicates thatthe category of goods, rather than specific producers or sources.In recent years, with the improvement of China’s market economysystem and the enhancement of IPR protection, more and more marketparticipants realize the significant value of the brand, and have relied onrelated laws to protect their trademark rights. However, any rights arelimited, and the trademark right is no exception. Faced with the stick ofrights held by rights holders, alleged infringers did their best to confront thedemands of the rights holders, in which the rational use of commoditygeneric name is one of the grounds of opposition the alleged infringer oftenuse. In such cases, to judge whether the trademarks involved belong to thegeneric names of goods or not usually is the key to the case outcome. However, the existing laws are quite general in judging the generic name ofgoods and lack of maneuverability. As a result, courts can only makejudgments according to their own understandings, which leads to thecontending, embarrassing situation of handling such cases. Such an outcomeis neither enable the parties’ satisfaction, but also a great disservice to thepredictability of the law, but also destroyed the delicate balance between freeand fair competition, which is contrary to the original intention of thetrademark system. This paper based on the trademark dispute status quorelated to generic name of goods in China analyzes the present problems injudging generic name of goods with specific cases and try to find outsolutions from realities.This paper can be divided into three parts. The first part includes theoverview of the fair use of trademarks and the generic name of goods system,examining the meaning of the fair use, legislation cases of the fair use indifferent nations and the definition of the meaning of the fair use andsummarizes the current situation of the judgment of generic names of goodsin China.The second part includes case studies of judging the generic name ofgoods, and starting from real cases, discuss the controversy in judging thegeneric name of goods in China. Four aspects controversial in practice are discussed in this part, which includes the judgment of regional name ofgoods, the judgment of normalization of generic name of goods, theeffectiveness of evidence of national and industrial standards, and the timeof judging the generic name of goods.The third part includes perfecting the standards of judging the genericname of goods. According to the problems in practice and the limitations ofrelated existing laws, the solution to set up the standards of judging thegeneric name of goods is raised. Abolishing the malpractices in applying thestandards of the form of trademarks, clear stipulation of the judgingstandards on the regional character and normalization of the generic name ofgoods and the clear definition of the time of judging the generic name ofgoods.