Recently, according to the enterprise investigation APP, the trademark status of "Taobao Yuan Universe" and "Ali Yuan Universe" applied for registration by Alibaba Singapore Holdings Co., Ltd. has been changed to "Rejected for Review", and the international classification includes education and entertainment, scientific instruments, etc., and the trademark application date is September 2021.
As we all know, 2021 can be described as the first year of the meta-universe. At the beginning of that year, Soul first proposed to build a "social metacosm" in the industry; in March 2021, Roblox, known as the first stock of the metacosm, was officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange; in May, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company was working hard to build an "enterprise metacosm"; in August, ByteDance spent a huge amount of money to acquire VR startup Pico; on October 28, the US social media giant Facebook announced that it was renamed "Meta". （Meta）......
Although the heat of the meta-universe continues to ferment, it is still in the initial stage of industry development, all walks of life are exploring the application of the concept, and many companies can't wait to apply for meta-universe-related trademarks. Internet giants such as Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance, and Weilai are also among them, after the registered meta-universe trademarks of Tencent and NetEase were also rejected.
Since the trademark name directly contains the word "universe" to apply for trademark registration, it is a lack of distinctiveness in the third paragraph of Article 11 of the Trademark Law. Metacosm is a new technology and concept that has just caught fire recently, but it is easy to make consumers misidentify the goods when used in designated goods, so the trademark applications related to metacosm have produced a large number of rejected records.
Although many companies have rejected their applications for meta-universe trademarks, there are still many companies actively applying for meta-universe trademarks.