The Validity Of The Coexistence Agreement In Trademark Registration Procedure

Coexistence agreements are an important means of achieving agreement between two trademark owners.In China,both the theoretical and practical circles,most of the debates on coexistence agreements focus on the stage of trademark authorization and confirmation.When the consent of the two owners of the same or similar trademark is reached,the trademark owner will often submit a co-existing agreement with the prior trademark owner to register with the administrative authority when applying for registration.The barrier has been eliminated and its registration application should be approved.In such cases,the executive will need to judge the effectiveness of the co-existing agreement.At present,due to the fact that the validity of the co-existence agreement is not clearly defined in China's Trademark Law and judicial interpretation,it has caused disagreements on the validity of the co-existence agreement between the administrative agency and the judicial authority in the process of trademark authorization.First of all,in the question of whether the trademark coexistence agreement can of course eliminate the obstacles to the registration of trademark applicants in the post,should the co-existence agreement be given absolute validity based on the private property of the trademark right,or should be further under the framework of the confusion theory? Judging the confusion and giving the coexistenceagreement relative effectiveness,different judgments are reflected in different judicial decisions.Secondly,if it is considered that the coexistence agreement cannot unavoid the registration barrier of the post-trademark,then in the process of further confusion,the coexistence agreement has an impact on the identification of such a confusing approximation.Between the administrative agency and the trademark owner,The presumption of confusion is more in line with the actual perception of consumers,and there is no consensus on judicial issues in this practice.In view of the above problems in practice,this paper starts with the existing trademark system in China,and after analyzing the deep reasons behind the two modes of effectiveness,it is clear that China should adopt a comparative effectiveness model similar to that of the United States.Secondly,combined with the existing trademark system in China,this paper analyses the possible problems in the application of the American-style relative validity model in China,and puts forward solutions to these problems: to distinguish the validity of the coexistence agreement in authorization confirmation based on the similarity of trademarks and the use of trademarks before registration.Finally,the author puts forward some suggestions on the system construction of trademark coexistence agreement in China,and intends to ensure the realization of public interests without confusion by standardizing the content of the agreement and improving the supervision mechanism.The main body is divided into four chapters.Chapter 1,according to 106 judicial cases about the coexistence of trademark agreements collected by the author,sums up two controversial focuses of trademark coexistence agreements in the examination of trademark authorization validity in different cases: whether coexistence agreements can eliminate the obstacles to the registration of later trademarks,and whether coexistence agreements can confirm the validity of trademark authorization.How does the identification of the confusion approximation affect? At the same time,it clarifies the relationship between the two controversial focuses.Chapter II elaborates on the first controversial issue mentioned above.This paper compares the two modes of granting absolute and relative validity to coexistenceagreements represented by the United Kingdom and the United States,and analyses the underlying reasons behind the two modes.Based on the existing trademark law system in China and the necessity of consumer confusion as a public interest in the context of trademark law,this paper clarifies that China should adopt the relative effectiveness model,and at the same time,it analyses the possible problems in the application of the American-style relative effectiveness model in China.Chapter III elaborates the role of coexistence agreement in confusion determination in the procedure of trademark authorization confirmation under the relative validity model.Based on the similarity of trademarks and the use of trademarks before registration,the different effects of coexistence agreements on confusion identification under different circumstances are distinguished.Chapter IV puts forward some suggestions on the construction of the coexistence system of Trademark Agreement in China.In order to protect public interests from confusion,we should standardize the content of coexistence agreement,establish a trademark pre-registration system and improve the registration and filing system of coexistence agreement.