The Research On Legal Issues Of Co-existence Trademarks

Co-existence Trademarks refer to the phenomenon,based on legitimate purposes,that different market players use the same or similar trademarks in the same or similar goods or services.And this kind of trademark has not caused confusion of consumers.Recently,these kind of cases attract much attention because of the lack of legislation.People don't have a clear understanding of judicial practice.In fact,in foreign countries trademark coexistence has been generally established.Through legislative experience of foreign countries,analyzing our trademark coexistence of existing problems,we proposed some advice to solve our trademark coexistence problems in legislative and judicial practice.The first part summarizes the basic concept of trademark coexistence,related concepts of discrimination and the reason how it appears.Trademark Coexistence refers to the phenomenon of different market players use the same or similar trademark in the same or similar goods or services based on a legitimate purpose,which does not lead to confusion.It's fundamentally different from community marks.Trademark coexistence arises because of the limited oversight trademark registration system inherent in the classification,territorial restrictions,historical development reasons,and combinations of elements of the review mechanism.The second part analyzes the theoretical basis of trademark coexistence.As a legal phenomenon,trademark co-existence firstly meet the legal principles of fairness and justice and efficiency,and conform with the requirements of trademark function theory based on the theory of interests balance of intellectual property rights.In addition,the likelyhood of confusion is the supporting theory in judicial judgement of trademark.The third part studies the national legislation situation of trademark coexistence.There are current legislation comparison of three typical countries,United States,Britain,Japan,which obtained coexistence mode selection shall be made corresponding to the principle of coexistence of trademark and trademark rights must not have a likelihood of confusion as the premise,as well as when necessary,trademark coexistence should be restricted.The forth part analyzes legal problems of our country's trademark coexistence.Firstly,this text analyzes the legislation problems.Secondly,this text summarizes the judicial status quo and problems that trademark coexistence in the current judicial cognizance and coexistence criterion chaos existing in the judicial practice,and inadequate protection of the public interest.Last,this text discusses the problems in the trademark administration.The fifth part of this text gives the suggestions to solve the problem of trademark coexistence.Firstly it suggests to tidy up the expression of"similar" and "confused" in the legislation of trademark law,enrich the content of prior trademark right,and add the article of agreement to trademark coexistence agreement.Secondly,this text suggests to improve judgement standards of trademark coexistence and set public interest as restrictive principle in the judgement.The third suggestion is to improve the mechanism of administrative supervision and the quality of the trademark examiners.