Legal Protection Of Non-traditional Trademarks

There are two growing trends in current world: one is informationization, and the other isglobalization. Information has explosively invaded every aspect of our daily life, which is different fromany historical period. Sometimes we are likely to get overwhelmed when facing immense amounts ofinformation. Commercial development and brand building also have to adapt to this environment, so thenew focus of competition has shifted to attracting the attention of consumers and stimulating their purchasedesire. As the main link between customers and merchants, trademark plays significant role in markettrading. When traditional plane trademark can not provide great assistance for merchants to win over thetarget market, new types of trademarks will emerge. Auditory, Olfactory trademarks which are relativelymade up of sound and smell, as well as and three-dimensional trademarks breach the limit of static state,two dimension, and visuality, build a platform which can create all-round sensory experience of hearing,smell, touch-trademark, and explicitly distinguish their products or service with other enterprises. Therefore,a plenty of foreign countries or areas have generally accepted these new types of trademarks and put themin their local scope of trademark protection. Globalization also makes requirements to our legal system.When China is participating international trade, our legal system should be integrated with internationalstandards and adapt to the developing trend of international trademark law, and the adjustment range of ourtrademark law should be expanded appropriately.Non-traditional trademarks, in essence, is also a symbol. Semiotics of trademark analysis can be moredirect and objective reflect the trademark nature of the requirements on the legal level. Trademark is usedto distinguish the different businesses to provide goods or services, rather than the traditional mark itselfhas its own unique character, able to establish links between businesses and consumers, and will not affectthe unique attributes of the goods or services or functional characteristics, so it can also have the trademarkelements: significant and non-functional. But these trademarks want to be protected by law, be registered asa trademark, there are still many obstacles. In the academic community there is considerable controversy,and because of difficulties in the actual operation of its natural attributes and existing legislation and moderestrictions that have made the non-traditional trade marks is difficult to be registered. Which significantobstacles on the trademark itself, identify barriers on consumer awareness on the actual operation of the judicial obstacles are the need to solve the problem.Some developed countries and regions, such as the United States, Japan, the European Union,Australia，Taiwan and Hong Kong are gradually recognized and acknowledged the non-traditionaltrademarks, and made some useful attempts in the legislative and judicial practice. These experiences wecan learn from and learn a lot of inspiration of the adaptation of the Trademark Law in China. Thecombination of analysis to overseas legal system, one by one the problems of the trademarks of the varioustypes of non-traditional trademarks specific analysis, and propose appropriate solutions, will help China’songoing trademark law to modify.With the actual business activities, more and more non-traditional trademarks, the corresponding legalnorms must follow. Especially scientific and technological progress, improving the quality of people, theseproblems will be solved, China’s Trademark Law modify should conform to the requirements of the times,made some useful improvements. Should first clear recognition of non-traditional trademarks can beregistered, a substantive review and strictly to its registration, apply for registration for the different typesof trademark infringement identified and responsibilities to bear but also to further clarify. Through theabove measures, the non-traditional trademarks better protection, in fact, encourage and guide domesticenterprises through innovative development of new types of marks, is conducive to better use of China’scultural resources and advantages in human resources to improve national enterprises brand image andinternational competitiveness, which is in line with the requirements and objectives of the developmentstrategy of China’s State Intellectual Property.