The Empirical Research On The Legal Protection Of Medical Services Trademark

With the broadening of the chance of entering the domestic medical market and theentrance of the alien medical resources, domestic hospitals’ service quality and marketquota will face new competition and challenges. In this course, the trade mark of hospitalswill become an vital protection method of hospitals’ intangible property, and an importantlegal safeguard of the build of hospitals. This paper initially put forward the basic theory ofmedical service trademark, and at the same time compared it with other concepts, such asRed Cross, medical symbols, and the name of firms. Trademark is the sign that candiscriminate someone’s own goods and services with others. According to the tangible andintangible character of products, trademarks can be divided into product trademark andservice product. The goods that hospital sells are services, with can be defined as intangibleproducts. Consequently, combined with the concept of trademark, medical servicetrademark can be defined as a law-protected mark that can distinguish the medical servicesthat supplied by different medical establishments after registration, and it is a kind ofservice trademark. The method of obtaining trademark is by registration, which meansapplication about a specific sign lodged by special entities to authorities is approved. Afterthe approval, the applicants will be able to use the sign exclusively under the protection ofthe Trademark Law. However, problems are rife with medical service trademark in practice.This paper adopted the empirical method, collected concerning information on China’smedical service trademark registration and undertook statistical analysis of data. Throughperusing the related clauses and referring to the implementation status of medical servicetrademark practice, this thesis found the following3problems: Firstly, trademarkinfringement is prevalent in common practice; Secondly, medical service trademark is inconstant conflict with company name; Thirdly, medical service trademark have always beenpoached. In the last part of the paper, this research analyzed the international conventionand exemplary law of service trademark protection, and summarized the concerningexperience that can be applied to China’s situation. Furthermore, based on the analysis oflegislative problem of trademark, this paper put forward the suggestion on the legalprotection of medical service trademark: for unregistered trademark, this paper thinks that its legal status should be clear-cut, then complete the stipulation of medical servicetrademark in ‘anti-unfair competition law’. Finally, explicitly set the regulation ofconcerning medical institute’s name right and reform current enterprise registrationmanagement system and the reasonable limitation of the right of medical service trademark.