Study On The Implied Reverse Passing-off Of Trademark

Printing Machinery Factory of Rugao,Jiangsu v.Yide Materials Co.,Ltd.in Rugao for the infringement of the exclusive right for registered trademark,which happened in 2003,is the first implied reverse passing-off case known in China.Article 57 of the Trademark Law of the People's Republic of China stipulates that the behavior of explicit reverse passing-off,performing as "without the consent of the trademark registrant,replacing the registered trademark on the goods with another one and putting the goods again into the market",is a kind of trademark infringement.However,there is no relevant regulation in the Trademark Law for the implied reverse passing-off.This leads to the situation that in the above case,the court can only make its judgement on the basis of the Miscellaneous Provision in the Trademark Law.In China,there is still no conclusion on the legal nature of implied reverse passing-off of trademark and its legal regulation.In foreign countries,there is a systematic theory of passing-off and reverse passing-off of trademark.Meanwhile,the relevant theory and legal regulation on the implied reverse passing-off of trademark are more mature than that in China.Therefore,in the study of the problems of implied reverse passing-off of trademark in our country,we can learn from related foreign theories and legal regulations and combine them with China's actual situation and legal background together,to explore legal regulatory recommendations for implied reverse passing-off of trademark.This paper is divided into four parts.In the first part,through the comparison from the perspectives of the legal background and the basis of the judgememts of two cases of implied reverse passing-off respectively from home and abroad,the problem of implied reverse passing-off is introduced.The second part mainly introduces the theory of implied reverse passing-off systematically,analyzes the nature of implied reverse passing-off,and expounds the harm of implied reverse passing-off.The third part introduces the regulations of other countries for implied reverse passing-off,and specifically analyzes some of them to get inspiration for the next part.The fourth part introduces the current situation of legislation for implied reverse passing-off in our country,points out the current legislative defects in our country,and finally puts forward the relevant suggestions according to the previous analysis results.