Author | Yao Lifan
"Beauty Headlines" new media
(Crowd search: i beauty headlines, you can contact to obtain relevant information)
While the Beijing Winter Olympics are in full swing, it has set off many hot spots and also given birth to many top streams, such as the new Internet celebrity ice pier that is "difficult to find", and the Chinese champion Gu Ailing of the "Shuangwen Heroine"...
However, the explosion of Gu Ailing and Ice Pier also seems to have made some speculators see "business opportunities", the first time malicious preemptive registration of trademarks related to the Winter Olympics, the squatters are both enterprises and individuals, "Ice Pier" and "Gu Ailing" and other trademark registration applications as many as 429.
On February 14, the State Intellectual Property Office issued a notice to crack down on malicious preemptive registration of trademarks such as "Ice Pier" and "Gu Ailing" in accordance with the law, and a total of 429 trademark registration applications were rejected, and 43 trademarks were voluntarily declared invalid according to their authority. It is reported that among the more than 400 trademark registration applications, the trademarks applied for by more than 10 cosmetics companies such as Guangzhou Hanpoli Biotechnology Co., Ltd. and Guangzhou Miya Cosmetics Co., Ltd. were rejected.
01
"Gu Ailing" and others were maliciously preemptively registered
429 applications for trademark registration were rejected
On February 8, after the news of Gu Ailing's victory in one fell swoop rushed to the hot search, the preemptive registration of the "Gu Ailing" trademark also triggered a heated discussion in public opinion. According to the official website of the Trademark Office of the State Intellectual Property Office, there are 31 trademark applications for "Gu Ailing", of which 2 applications are in 3 categories (daily necessities). Among them, the 11 "Gu Ailing" trademarks applied for by natural person Zhang Mou in June 2019 have been registered, and their international classifications include advertising sales, education and entertainment, etc.
In addition to "Gu Ailing", the mascots of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, "Ice Pier" and "Snow Rongrong", were also maliciously preemptively registered. Among them, the number of applications for the "Ice Pier" trademark was 177, and there were 5 cases of applications for 3 types of daily chemical trademarks; the number of applications for the "Xue Rongrong" trademark was 91, and there were 5 cases of applications for 3 types of daily chemical trademarks.
For the phenomenon of malicious preemptive registration of "Gu Ailing" and so on, the official intervened quickly and protected the relevant trademarks.
The State Intellectual Property Office mentioned in the circular that the State Intellectual Property Office resolutely cracked down on malicious preemptive registration of mascots and athletes' names for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, and rejected 429 trademark registration applications such as "Ice Pier" and "Gu Ailing" No.62453532 41128524 and "Gu Ailing" in accordance with the Regulations on the Protection of Olympic Symbols and Article 10, Paragraph 1(8) of the Trademark Law. In accordance with the first paragraph of Article 44 of the Trademark Law, 43 41126916 registered trademarks, such as "Xuedundun" and No. 38770198 "Gu Ailing", were voluntarily declared invalid in accordance with their authority.
In fact, not only this Year's Beijing Winter Olympics, almost every major sports event or important node will be accompanied by the occurrence of trademark squatting incidents.
Last year, shortly after the Tokyo Olympics, a large number of champions' names were applied for trademark registration. Among them, Quanhongchan is the most "popular", and dozens of "Hongchan" related trademarks have been preemptively registered within 4 days. In August last year, the State Intellectual Property Office issued a circular announcing the rejection of 109 trademark registration applications, including "Yang Qian", "Chen Meng" and "Quan Hongchan".
02
For "profit"
Trademark squatting in bad faith
In recent years, it is not uncommon to maliciously preemptively register well-known trademarks, trade names and celebrities at home and abroad. On the one hand, squatters rub hot spots and attract traffic; on the other hand, they use squatting as a "business" in order to seek greater benefits.
Olympic athletes like Gu Ailing have strong gold-sucking ability and huge commercial value. Once someone registers her name as a trademark, the related products under the trademark have a high reputation from the time they leave the factory, which can save considerable branding costs and help to quickly open up the market.
The huge "profit-making" ability of celebrity names allows a small number of enterprises and natural persons to join the ranks of trademark squatting for the purpose of obtaining improper benefits, and they always stare at the wind and grass in the market, see the "name" intention, and gradually form a gray chain of interests of trademark squatting, hoarding and scalping.
In recent years, the State Intellectual Property Office has also been working to further strengthen the crackdown on trademark squatting in bad faith. It is understood that in 2021, a total of 482,000 applications for bad faith trademark registration were cracked down.
In March 2021, the State Intellectual Property Office issued the Special Action Plan for Cracking Down on Bad Faith Trademark Squatting, focusing on the special action to crack down on bad faith trademark squatting, and severely cracking down on 7 types of malicious preemptive registration 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, well-known works or character names of public figures with high visibility".
In October 2021, the State Council issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Protection and Application of Intellectual Property Rights", which clearly proposes to strictly regulate trademark registration, strengthen credit supervision and industry self-discipline, severely crack down on malicious trademark registration and agency acts that are not intended for use, and deal with relevant acts in accordance with laws and regulations.
03
Beauty industry is the "hardest hit area" for trademark squatting
The beauty industry has long been the "hardest hit area" for trademark squatting. As long as the squatter smells that a foreign brand has signs of popularity, he will quickly take down a series of graphic trademarks of the brand, and make a wave of "fast money" by taking the brand's hitchhiker, so as to achieve "the predecessor planted a tree, and the posterity cooled down".
Due to the preemptive registration of trademarks, some well-known brands have to solve their "identity" problems after entering China. "Arie Hut" changed the name of the Chinese to "Itie's House", "KIEHL'S Chell's" changed to "Keyan's", "ANESSA Ahn", "3CE" to "3CE STYLENANDA", and so on.
It is precisely because illegal trademark squatting incidents are not uncommon, a large number of malicious preemptive registration of trademarks force law-abiding enterprises to register a large number of defensive trademarks, the so-called "trademark genealogy" phenomenon, and most of the trademarks register all trademark types in classes 1-45 to cut off all possible intrusion paths for copycats.
For example, for the purpose of protecting trademarks, Guangzhou Yixian E-commerce Co., Ltd., the parent company of Perfect Diary, applied for the registration of a number of trademarks such as "Pic bear meta universe", "Perfect Diary meta universe" and "PERFECT DIARY METAVERSE", and the international classification includes daily chemical products and kitchen sanitary ware.
According to the latest report from the World Intellectual Property Organization, the number of international trademark applications rose by 14.4% to 73,100 in 2021.
Among them, L'Oréal Group filed a total of 171 international trademark applications in 2021, becoming the beauty group with the most trademark applications. In addition, the data shows that Shiseido submitted 89 applications, ranking ninth, and Estée Lauder submitted 20 applications.
As the relevant departments maintain a high-pressure posture of severely cracking down on the bad faith registration of trademarks, and the awareness of intellectual property protection of enterprises continues to strengthen, all kinds of attempts to seek improper benefits through malicious trademark squatting are doomed to be "a bamboo basket to hit the water".