A Study On The Cognizance Of Trademark Reverse Confusion Infringement

The case of "Fei Cheng Wu Rao" led to a wide range of discussions,because the court quote in the verdict "reverse confusion" concept directly.The concept of "reverse confusion" originates from American jurisprudence.And there are also two trademark users,but the defendant always has a strong economic power to advertise and publicize,so that consumers usually make a mistake and believe that the goods of the senior user come from the junior user.At the first,reverse confusions were not incorporated into legal protection.But as the number of such cases increased gradually,The United States began to pay attention to the dangers of reverse confusion,so more and more courts insist that prohibiting it has its own necessity.We should know that what attitude we hold towards the reverse confusion of infringement fundamentally depends on the considerations of trademark acquisition system.The United States support the trademark use system and China takes trademark registration system,so the solving path and approach of problems are also different.This paper combs the judicial jurisprudence and the identification of trademark reverse confusion infringement in the United States.I try to analyze and learn the experience basis on the characteristics of reverse confusion.I hope to make some suggestions for the solution of trademark infringement dispute in China The article is divided into the following five parts.Part 1 is the concept of the reverse confusion.This part introduces the concept and the main features,and puts forward the existing problems,which explains the necessity of regulating the reverse confusion and should be regarded as infringement.As the pemiciousness of the reverse confusion,there is a necessity to confirm infringement to trademark rights for such kind of confusion.After analyzing the situation of China's trademark reverse confusion,the main analysis is the legislative and judicial status quo system and its dilemma.Part 2 is the application of trademark reverse confusion in the trademark registration system.This is also the innovation of the article.This part mainly introduces the system of trademark acquisition between China and the United States,and analyzes the reasons for the existence of reverse confusion in the two systems.The present trademark law adds some restrictive provisions in order to limit the expansion of trademark registration system,as the defense of the junior user.Part 3 is the identification of trademark reverse confusion infringement.This part analyzes the controversies and the factors which is different in function when identifying the likelihood of confusion in the forward confusion.Then through the research on the America trademark reverse confusion,especially the Polaroid standard,to provide reference to perfect our system of reverse confusion.Part 4 provides the suggestions to the settlement mechanism to reverse confusion cases.It is mainly about how to improve the trademark registration system and how to stipulate the concept of reverse confusion.Taking into account the stability of the law,the author gives a conservative but practical proposal.Part 5 is the conclusion.It is a simple summary discussion of previous part.Reverse confusion infringement should be prescribed in law,in order to eliminate the current court trial basis of the confusion.Prohibiting reverse confusion infringement is a method to regulate registered trademarks which has large-scale enterprises,capital,market,brand and other advantages.And it will maintain the Chinese trademark registration system helpfully.Under current procedure of trademark registration system in China,there are some problems such as trademark preemptive registration,insufficiency of unregistered trade mark protection and so on,so the trademark registration system has been questionable.But we should still adhere to the principle of registration,and improve it constantly.Then,the trade mark registration system could have better work and protect the trademark rights properly.In view of that,this article tries to bring up some reflections concerning localization of reverse confusion in combination with judicial practice in China I hope it will be helpful to the study of new type of trademark infringement in China.