On The Legal Protection Of Unregistered Trademarks

Trademark, which was derived because of the development of commodity economy,is acommercial mark identifying the source of the goods and services. Hard evidence shows thattrademark has a history of about1,000years. However, trademark coming into our view withmodern legal sense is a matter of the modern times. With the development of westerncapitalism, especially the rise of protecting intellectual rights, people paid unprecedentedattention to trademark. Nowadays countries all over the world have already foundeddistinctive law systems to protect trademarks. Trademarks had never been so closely related tohuman life. With the development of trademarks, the argument about ways and extent ofprotecting trademarks is never ending---how to confirm and protect trademark rights.Through clarifying its history of development, analyzing its value, comparing theinternational convention and the protecting modes in the law systems of several majorcountries, this essay attempts to put forward the necessity, value and measures of protectingthe unregistered trademarks. In the writer’s opinion, unregistered trademarks and registeredones only have difference in their definition by supervisor mode, but not in their value. Thelife of trademarks lies in application, while the value of them lies in reputation. As one of theintellectual rights, trademarks can form an invisible property and right, while application andreputation of trademarks are the key things. Comparing all the major countries, especially thetwo judicial system countries and national convention, comparatively, the trademark laws orother laws of our country have never attached importance to protecting unregisteredtrademarks, nor measures have been taken. To promote and maintain market order, we shouldconsider the real situation, use the proper methods of international convention and the twomajor legal systems about the unregistered trademarks for reference, then we can perfect thetrademark laws and avoid improper competition laws, so as to reflect the pursuit of protectingtrademarks and their value.