The Limitation Of Trans-category Protection Of Well-known Trademark

Along with today's rapid economic growth and increasing commercialization,trademarks,specially well-known trademarks,have been attached much attention due to their inherent huge commercial value,being elevated themselves as one of the most important intangible assets of the enterprise.Representing vast commercial radiation areas and huge market profits,these trademarks have played a key role in enlarging production scale,increasing profit rate and strengthening competitiveness.With the internationalization of intellectual property protection as well as the improvement in the trademark owners' awareness and enforcement of anti-infringement of trademark rights,more and more countries are beginning to take trans-category protection for well-known trademarks by adopting the dilution theory.The system of trans-category protection,based on the changes of the function of trademarks,to take special and expanded protection for well-known trademarks.Its fundamental goal is to protect the distinctiveness and identification of well-known trademarks from blurring,tarnishing and degenerating,which is beneficial to free competition and consumers' interests.The trans-category protection of well-known trademarks has become a hot issue in the field of intellectual property rights worldwide and a new trend in the protection of intellectual property rights.As a member country of the WTO,Chins has the obligation to make corresponding provisions of trans-category protection for well-known trademarks,and bring them into force.But,if the behavior of the use of all unauthorized well-known trademarks non-restrictedly constitutes " dilution ",this overprotection will greatly expand trademark owners' interests,which consequently breaks the mechanism of inner balance under the framework of the traditional trademark law,and possibly leads trademark owners to abuse their rights so as to monopolize market and gain excess profits,and results in various interest conflicts as well,thus impeding others' freedom of speech and damaging free and fair competition.The study on the dilution behavior of famous trademarks in our country is still in its infancy and has relatively large defects in the legislation.Therefore,in view of certain risks existing in the trademark dilution theory itself,we must be cautious to integrate legal resources when we apply this theory to establish Chinese trademark trans-category protection system.That is to say,when taking anti-dilution protection for well-known trademarks,we must clearly define related and appropriate restrictions on the basis of not violating international treaty and learning from experience of developed countries,taking into account others' interests in order to safeguard public interests,and avoid illegal monopoly,which will ultimately promote the healthy and rapid development of China's economy.In short,dilution has become an independent trademark infringement act internationally in the aspects of legislation,theory and practice and received a growing attention.Therefore,in order to not to fall into passivity in law enforcement,our legislation must take the initiative in responding to this phenomenon and constitute a complete and standardized system.As one of the late-development countries in trademark rights,China should adequately protect trademark rights so as to promote the advantageous effect of trademark rights;however,the protection cannot go against the purpose of setting up the trademark rights system.We should seek the optimal balance between protection and regulation of the abuse.On the one hand,we should,when advocating the advantages of trademark rights,encourage innovation,promote economic development and improve social and public interests;on the other hand,we should put restrictions on trademark owners and prevent them from infringing others' interests,the social and public interests as well as limiting competition in the market so as to give full play to the advantages of the trademark rights system.