The trademark "Gu Ailing" is registered Lawyer: Bad faith squatting is not protected

On February 8, China's Gu Ailing won the championship in the final of the freestyle skiing women's big jump at the Beijing Winter Olympics, which received great attention. Subsequently, some netizens found that in the same way that Quan Hongchan's name was preemptively registered, the three words "Gu Ailing" were registered as trademarks as early as June 10, 2019. Some insiders in the field of intellectual property rights said that for trademark squatting behaviors such as "famous brands" and "rubbing hot spots", if they are determined to be bad faith registrations, they will be handled through legal means, and the applicant will not be punished at present, but the agency may be punished.

found

"Gu Ailing" trademark

There are 29 applications

According to the Enterprise Investigation App, there are 29 applications for the "Gu Ailing" trademark. Among them, the 11 "Gu Ailing" trademarks applied for by natural person Zhang Mou on June 10, 2019 have been registered, and the international classification involves education, education and entertainment, advertising sales, lamps and air conditioners, etc. The trademark "Gu Ailing" applied for by the remaining companies and natural persons is displayed as "in the application for registration" or "invalid trademark".

Some netizens posted that on June 6, 2019, Gu Ailing announced that he would go to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and his name was preemptively registered for a number of trademarks 4 days later, and the subjective malignancy and speculation of trademark applicants were more obvious. At the same time, the three words "Gu Ailing" do not have a specific meaning in Chinese, the applicant and the registered trademark are not related, and there is reason to suspect that it is a famous brand and a preemptive trademark.

stipulate

Preemptive registration of the names of public figures

It is a malicious registration

According to the answers to key questions in the Guidelines for the Examination and Trial of Trademarks published on the official website of the Intellectual Property Office, there is no definition of "bad faith" in the legal provisions of the Trademark Law of the Mainland, and the relevant provisions on combating the registration of trademarks in bad faith are scattered in articles 4, 7, 15, 19, 32 and 44 of the Trademark Law. However, it is generally believed that the bad faith registration of trademarks can be roughly divided into two types according to the interests infringed: one is the bad faith trademark squatting behavior, that is, the "name brand" and "rubbing hot spots" and the trademark registration application behavior with the core characteristics of damaging or clinging to the goodwill, civil rights and legitimate rights and interests of others; the other is the "bad faith trademark registration application that is not for the purpose of use", that is, "batch application" and "circle resources". and other trademark registration applications with disrupting or impacting the order of trademark registration and management as the core feature.

Article 32 of the Trademark Law stipulates that an application for trademark registration shall not infringe upon the existing prior rights of others, nor shall it be preemptively registered by improper means a trademark that has been used by others and has a certain impact. The Trademark Examination and Hearing Guidelines further stipulate that prior rights include name rights, portrait rights, copyrights and other prior rights that should be protected.

Song Linqing, a partner at Beijing Runjie Zhicheng Intellectual Property Agency, said in an interview with a reporter from Beiqing Daily that the acts of violating the principle of good faith, registering trademarks in bad faith, and borrowing judicial resources to seek improper benefits with trademark rights will not be protected according to law. According to Article 4 of the Trademark Law, an application for the registration of a trademark in bad faith that is not intended for use shall be rejected.

Since in 2019, Gu Ailing was only well-known in the field of skiing, there may be trademark examiners who do not understand this situation, so the application for registration was successful. But now, some people who want to re-register the "Gu Ailing" trademark will definitely be rejected. Song Linqing explained that for "Gu Ailing", which was registered as early as June 2019, it will be declared invalid according to the procedure for filing an invalidation and according to the method of invalidation.

On the question of whether the applicant will be punished, Song Linqing explained that the current trademark law does not involve penalties for individual registration, but it will punish agencies. According to Article 19 of the Trademark Law, relevant agencies may be punished.

Let's go

Last year, 482,000 cases were hit

Bad faith trademark registration application

The mainland has been committed to cracking down bad faith trademark registration applications. Since March 2021, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) has focused on a special campaign to crack down on bad faith trademark squatting, severely cracking down on seven types of malicious preemptive registration cases that seek improper benefits, disrupt the order of trademark registration management, and cause greater adverse social impact, one of which is "malicious preemptive registration of the names of public figures with high popularity, well-known works or character names".

On August 19, 2021, in response to the trademark registration applications submitted by multiple parties for the names of Olympic athletes such as "Yang Qian", "Chen Meng" and "Quan Hongchan", the State Intellectual Property Office issued the Notice on Rejecting 109 Trademark Registration Applications such as "Yang Qian", "Chen Meng" and "Quan Hongchan" in accordance with the law, and 109 relevant trademark registration applications such as "Yang Qian", "Chen Meng" and "Quan Hongchan" were rejected according to law.

On January 12, 2022, at the 2021 intellectual property related work statistics conference held by the Information Office of the State Council, Zhang Zhicheng, director of the Department of Intellectual Property Protection of the State Intellectual Property Office, said that the cumulative crackdown on malicious trademark registration applications in the whole year was 482,000, and at the same time last year, 111 applications for trademark registration such as "Changjin Lake" and "Quanhong Chan" were quickly rejected, and 1,635 registered trademarks were declared invalid according to their authority. Forward to the local government 1062 clues in trademark registration cases suspected of major adverse effects and bad faith. In the whole society, a high-pressure situation has been created to severely crack down on the bad faith registration of trademarks.

Zhang Zhicheng said that the State Intellectual Property Office has also intensified the crackdown on bad faith preemptive registration by trademark agencies. Organized local intellectual property management departments to file and investigate 24 trademark agency cases involving the preemptive registration of hot word trademarks for the Olympic Games, and imposed 13 administrative penalties. For the two trademark agencies that represented the serious illegal circumstances of the major bad faith preemptive registration case, administrative penalties were directly imposed to stop their trademark agency business. Interviewed and governed 13 platform-type trademark agencies, guided them to establish and improve the screening mechanism for bad faith trademark squatting, and prevented illegal acts such as bad faith trademark squatting.

Article/Reporter Lin Lishuang Coordinator/Yu Meiying