Research On The Punitive Damage In Trademark Law

With the rapid development of economy, trade mark infringement has becomecommon phenomenon, which dose not only harm the interests of trademark owners,but also do damage to the public interest. And due to the low cost of infringement,there is a lot of repeated infringement. How to strengthen the protection of trademarkrights is a serious problem. In order to give adequate compensation to trademarkowners, China’s “Trademark Law” was amended in2013,formally applied thepunitive damages.Punitive damages have the function of compensation,punishment and curb. Itcan compensate the lack of traditional compensatory damages remedy, but also canlink up criminal trademark protection and civil protection, which can perfect theresponsibility system of trademark infringement damages. But there are also somecontroversies, especially in terms of determining punitive damages and the amount ofthe applicable conditions.As for how to apply the system of punitive damages and related legislation, thecurrent study of theory and practice still not fully meets the need for legislation andjudicial practice. As the origin of punitive damages, the United Kingdom and theUnited States do a lot of practice in the field. These foreign experiences have providedan effective reference for the improvement of trademark law punitive damages system.Chapter one study on the basic theoretical issues of punitive damages, as well assome confusion of the application may arise in our trademark law. This chapterdiscusses the following issues: the nature and function of punitive damages;applicable problems of punitive damages in other laws; the deficiencies of legislationof punitive damages.Chapter two study on the legislation and its application in different countries.First describe the change of the attitude of the civil law countries towards punitivedamages. And then highlight some of the practices of the United Kingdom, the UnitedStates Department in punitive damages regime, to provide a reference for the designof China’s punitive damages system in trademark law.Chapter three study on the application of punitive damages in China’s trademarklaw, and offer some suggestions of improvement. This chapter proceeds as follow: theconditions to apply the punitive damages includes malice, serious circumstances andthe request of tortfeasor; the accounting of the punitive damages should be on thebasis of compensatory; punitive damages and statutory damages/fines shall not beapplied at the same time, and can replace the fine to a certain extent.Conclusion section summarizes the main content and basic ideas in this paper,and gives some suggestions about the follow-up study.