Infringement Trademark Translation Studies

With the expanding social and economic development, there are growingcommodities and services in the same category available for consumers’ choices, theimportance of trademark has been well awared. Many companies and factoriesinfringe other trademark owners’ rights to gain economic benefits. As a result, varioustrademark infringement cases have been hugely arised in current economic society.Among the above trademark infringement cases, the called “translatedtrademark” caused most attention. Many foreign trademark owners face suchchallenge entering into China market, does the Chinese trademark originated from theforeign trademark infringes someone else’s? Or have they been infringed by localcompany? How can we protect the un-registered translation trademarks?However, under current Trademark law and relevant interpretations in China, thedefinition of translated trademark is not clear, the infringement judgment concerningthe translated trademark has not been clarified, so as the proper protection on thetrademark owners. On the other side, under such law environment, from the practiceperspective, the courts in different areas and levels have different understandingsregarding current law, hence there have been various judgments concerning thetranslated trademark infringements. As a consequence, it becomes hard for thetrademark owners to defend their own rights by means of laws in China, obviously theintellectual property industry and social economy cannot benefit from suchcircumstance.This article intends to discuss the necessirity and importance of translationtrademarks with “Starbuck” case and “CASTAL” case, which is to protect theinterests of consumers and trademark owners; lists various theories regarding thetrademark infringement standards like confusion theory, associative theory anddilution theory, and the consisted elements via more cases eg.“Komondar”,“CASTAL” and “ROSEMOUNT”, approaches the challenges in the current trademarklaw and practices and advises accordingly, for instance, we can expand the trademark scope to translated trademark setting clear definition, assign reasonableresponsibilities to the parties, enhance the penalty to well protect the translatedtrademark owners’ rights.