Discussion On The Conflicts And Coordination Between The Geographical Indications And The Geographic Names

Nowadays, with the increasing strengthening of the globalization of theintellectual property rights and with the rapid development of modern commodityeconomy, the protection for geographic names or the origin place of goods hasincreasingly become a focus issue. China is a large country as to the resources ofgeographical indications, but it is far from a strong country as to the protection ofgeographical indications. Compared with the long history and mature protectionsystem as to the protection of geographical indications of European countriesincluding France, our country does not have the history of the protection ofgeographical indications. China did not start the legislative work of geographicalindications until it had entered into WTO in2001, which led to the comparativelyshort time of the theoretical research into the protection of the geographicalindications. It appears in practice legislative chaos and no unified policies. Theprotection contents, protection scope and validity conflict with each other and novalid legal protection system for geographical indications have been formed. Amongthese, geographical indications and the geographic name mark conflict with eachother most. How to solve the conflicts not only relates to the survival anddevelopment of individual enterprise or industry, but also directly affects thedevelopment of the entire agricultural economy of China. In practice, the conflicts between the geographical indications and thegeographic name mark are finally resolved by judicial adjudication. Therefore thejudicial adjudication will have the guiding function until the existing laws andregulations have clear resolution mechanism and stipulations as to the conflictsbetween the geographical indications and the geographic name mark. However, manyof current judicial precedents conflict with each other, the focus and basis as to whichare different from each other. Therefore reasonable expectations cannot be formed asto relevant disputes, which does no good to the disputes resolution.Based on the aforesaid reasons, this article attempts to analyze the case ofZhejiang Tea Group Co., Ltd. suing Hangzhou Shifeng Tea Co., Ltd. as to thetrademark infringement and unfair competition disputes and find out the principle andthe way to resolve the conflicts between these two issues by clarifying the legalrelationships between the geographical indications and the geographic name mark andput forward feasible consideration factor for the judicial decision on the conflictbetween the geographical indications and the geographic name mark from practicalaspect.The basic framework of this article is: first of all, the writer introduces in theforeword two typical cases as to the conflicts between the geographical indicationsand the geographic name mark and the Shifeng case handled by the writer. Then fromsome basic concepts of the geographical indications and the geographic name mark,the writer introduces the characteristics, differences and similarities, the reasons forthe conflicts between the geographical indications and the geographic name mark andhow to solve the conflicts and discusses the consideration factor for the judicialdecision on the conflict between the geographical indications and the geographicname mark.Chapter One Study basic concepts of the geographical indications and thegeographic name mark. Firstly introduce the basic concepts and features of thegeographic indications and the geographic name mark and the differences andsimilarities between them. Chapter Two The reasons for the conflicts between the geographic indicationsand the geographic name mark and the way to resolve them. Firstly introduce thereasons for the conflicts between the geographic indications and the geographic namemark, mainly including historical reasons and realistic defects stipulated by the laws.Then introduce the manifestation of the conflicts between them. Finally introduce theexisting way to solve the conflicts between them by sorting out some cases.Chapter Three Discuss the problems and consideration factors for judicialdecision on the conflicts between the geographic indications and the geographic namemark by sorting out cases, specifically including prior rights, awareness ofcommercial marks, subjective intention, fair use and benefit balance.The reason why this article is innovative is that, until the existing laws andregulations have clear and explicit discretion stipulations on the conflicts between thegeographic indications and the geographic name, the writer sorts out relevant casesand concludes various consideration factors as to this kind of cases in order to haveclear disputes focuses when handling such cases and this does good to thepre-judgment of such cases.