| Trademarks represent the reputation and image of an enterprise.A trademark recognized and well-known by consumers requires huge time,money and other costs.In order to quickly increase the popularity of products or services,some merchants choose to directly apply for registration of a commercial logo used by others,or to register other prior rights such as the name of a well-known work as their own trademark,which leads to a status of conflict between legally authorized trademark rights and prior rights.How to balance the interests of trademark owners and prior rights holders fairly,fairly distribute the rights and obligations,and effectively prevent and resolve the conflict of rights between the two have become one of the most urgent,necessary and realistic focal issues of Intellectual property legislation,enforcement and justice.In view of this,on the basis of the existing legal system in China,this article draws on the advanced and mature legislative technology and experience of the foreign trademark law on the prior rights system,and puts forward the preliminary idea on further improving China’s prior rights system.It is expected that through this system,the interests of trademark owners and prior rights holders will be reasonably balanced,the possibility of conflicts between the two rights will be reduced,and the goal of fair and just legal value promoted by the law will be truly realized.The article first summarizes and sorts out the meaning and scope of the prior rights from a theoretical level.In view of the problem of unclear meaning in theory and the problem of excessive scope of the prior rights in practice,the scope of the prior rights is limited to the rights of the previous business name,the character images or fragments or certain titles of the works used in the past,unregistered trademarks used previously but which have not reached a certain impact,the trade names used in the past,the domain names used previously,the product names used previously,influential product names,packaging and decoration used previously,names of well-known works and roles used previously,etc.Afterwards,the article Investigated the causes of prior rights conflicts from multiple angles of practice,legal principles and systems,and introduced the basic principles of civil law into the resolution of rights conflicts in the field of trademark law.It is proposed that the legal protection of prior rights of trademarks should follow the four principles of good faith,balance of interests and benefits,and allowing rights to coexist.With regard to the improvement of the prior protection system for trademarks in China,this article proposes the following assumptions regarding legislative deficiencies and problems in judicial practice: first,on the basis of establishing a preemptive clause,further improving the existing prior rights;then,introduce compensation rules and attachment systems,and coordinate the functions of administrative and judicial organs. |
