Reseach Of The Common Ownership Of Trademark Rights

As a kind of intellectual property right, the trademark right plays a vital role in promoting the economic development. A trademark can be worth as much as hundreds of billions of Yuan. Due to the increasing competition in the market along with the economic development, the common ownership of trademark rights has become not only a means for different enterprises to ally with each other and expand themselves, but also a way to add value to the trademarks.The common ownership of trademark rights is a relatively new concept. Our Trademark Law has only established its legal form, stipulated that it could be gained for the common owners by co-applying a trademark together, and it should be applied through a designated representative. But there are still no specific provisions for its characters, classification, or the rights and obligations of the representative. The common ownership of trademark rights has indeed become more and more common, and many problems have emerged in the process. For instance, it is not decided that whether or not the qualifications of the common owners should be restricted, that when one of the common owners convey his or her rights to others, should he or she obtain agreements from other common owners or not, and the rights and obligations of the common owners are not explicit either.This paper focuses on the subject of common ownership of trademark rights basing on the general common ownership theory, by using such an approach as following. Firstly, elaborate its basic concepts, which is two or more civil subjects being entitled to the exclusive rights of a same trademark through joint application behavior, by analyzing and combining the principles of general common ownership, the provisions in the Trademark Law, and the characters of trademark rights. And then differentiate it with some confusing concepts such as collective trademarks and coexistence of trademarks, and analyze its legal characters. There are some requirements for the qualifications of the common owners, they need to complete certain administrative registration, and the rights protection duration is different from other kinds of common ownership too. Secondly, analyze and discuss some of the controversial issues among the scholars, such as the one that whether or not the common ownership of trademark rights could be classified as per the general common ownership, compare and analyze those different theories, concluding that it could be classified as several co-ownership and joint ownership. When the conventions of the parties are unknown, the type of the common ownership should be presumed as several co-ownership, and different common ownership should abide by different exercising rules. Thirdly, discuss the issue about the exercising of common ownership of trademark rights, and study the particularity in its usage, disposition and partition. Lastly, point out the existing problems basing on the preliminary analysis and present the solutions accordingly, which are to consummate the relevant laws and regulations, formulate some of its basic principles, and establish the correlative systems such as the representative system and the registration system.