Research On The Legal Effect Of Trademark Coexistence Agreements

The coexistence of trademarks is an unavoidable social and economic phenomenon,and the coexistence of trademark agreements is the most important one of its main forms.The identification of the same and similar trademarks must be evaluated by confusing trademark principles.And agreement of coexisting system is established on the basis of the same and similar marks,if two trademarks is not identified as confusable,the two marks are not belong to the same and similar trademarks,they can exist independently and there is not a say of coexistence of trademarks at all.Therefore,the trademark confusion principle should be the premise of the coexistence agreement,not the obstacle of the coexistence agreement.The confusing trademark principles should return to its duty on protecting the rights of the trademark owner,for the sake of trademark law is a private rights law.The confusion principle works mainly as to protect the rights of trademark owners not to be infringed.Trying to apply the confusing principles to restrict the private rights use of trademark owner is conflict with the aim of the trademark law of protecting private rights.The WIPO defines coexistence as the same or similar trademarks using that does not affect their respective commercial activities,and when introduced,it is forced to add "no confusion ".Although the trademark law does not stipulate the coexistence system,let alone the coexistence agreement,there are abundant cases of coexistence agreement in the judicial practice of our country.Evaluating from the case of the SupremePeople's Court of The People's Republic of China on the coexistence agreement,China's judicial system has returned to the protection of the private rights of the trademark owners.In particular,in last year's " GROUPON " case,the Supreme People's Court of China affirmed the effect of the coexistence beyond the fact of being confusing similar trademarks.The court considers that the two relevant trademarks have already constituted a confounding similarity,but should respect the right holder's arrangement of their rights,and the obstacles to application for registration have been excluded.This will be the mainstream direction of judgment about the coexistence of trademark agreements,and from the perspective of the precedent of evidence of the Beijing Superior People's Court,the Beijing Superior People's Court also gradually change the attitude of effectiveness to recognize coexistence agreement.This article is divided into four parts: the first part mainly introduces the case analysis of The Supreme People's Court of China on the coexistence agreement,and it is supported by the case of Beijing Superior Court in recent years.The second part elaborates on the existence of the existence of trademark coexistence agreement,which has its legal support and realistic soil.The third part analyzes the factors that influence the validity of the coexistence agreement,which is mainly the misunderstanding of the validity of the coexistence agreement.At last,the paper mainly studies the legal effect of the coexistence agreement on the relevant trademark law.