Research On The Legal Protection Of Prior Trademark Rights

With the rapid development of market economy, because trademark itself has huge commercial value, it has obtained increasing attention and emphasis. In order to enhance the social awareness of goods or services quickly and reduce publicity cost of products, some businesses apply for registration the trademarks that others already used but are not registered. However, once the trademarks are successfully registered, the conflict between prior rights and trademark rights emerge, thus, the issue whether prior trademark rights need being protected by the laws also arises. Trademark protection in China takes trademark registration as the basis and the role of trademark registration system in trademark exclusive rights protection and standardization of the trademark management is undoubted. However, voluntary principles of trademark registration cannot make a lot of unregistered trademark get effective protection of the law, thus the interests of trademark prior rights are violated. Up to March2012, the number of registered trademark applications in China had broken through tens of millions and the accumulative number of trademark registrations was nearly7million, both of which ranked No.1in the world, but the number of unregistered trademark is much larger. Therefore, strengthening the research of trademark prior right protection has important theoretical and practical significance.The study of trademark prior right protection is beneficial to the stability of existing social order, solve rights conflict between people of prior rights and trademark right, and maintain the interests of each party. Firstly, this paper states from theoretical level and makes comprehensive analysis of the concept, characteristics, basic nature, legal basis and practical significance of trademark prior right; Secondly, it is thought that mixed gain principle stresses e trademark registration still is the basic principles of trademark rights but not the only principle by analyzing foreign legal protection system of trademark rights, In order to make trademark right verification reasonable and fair, registration principle and use principle should be combined and trademark legislation should define the spirit of legislation of "former application prevails, and the use is supplementary". Finally, after analysis of the current situation and existing problems of trademark prior right protection in China, it is found that legal protection of trademark prior rights of legislation in China mainly is concentrated in the relevant legal provisions of General Principles of Civil Law, Law of Against Anti-Unfair Competition, Trademark Law and so on. The protection is quite limited, and it inevitably makes the interests of trademark prior right be violated in market economy, and the interests of the unregistered trademark holder can not receive reasonable protection in the legal framework. Therefore, as for the improvement of the trademark prior right protection system in China, the legal protection of trademark prior right should follow honest credit, respect and protect interests of prior rights and balance interest, and should be perfected from Trademark Law, Law of Against Anti-Unfair Competition and General Principles of Civil Law.