"What? Maybe you can't even keep the brand? Just let me lose some money? Then I want a lawyer like you to be useful!"

Deng Changchun appointed himself as an "industrial believer" and has always looked down on the "virtual economy practitioners" who sell their mouths. Otherwise, a few months ago, he would not have offended Feng Jianxiong for no reason.

Therefore, as soon as he heard the professional advice given by Li Yifeng, he immediately felt very unhappy, and felt that the lawyer he hired was really a wreck.

He was a fisherman, and he felt that the most honorable way to make money was to sell goods. So even the brand awareness is very indifferent, he doesn't think it's a big deal to infringe on other people's trademarks in his bones - brother's things are of excellent quality, what's wrong with using your brand?

In recent years, with the rise of mob public opinion that "the real economy is glorious, the virtual economy is shameful", Deng Changchun, who was still a little inferior, trembled even more in his heart, thinking every day that "college students are amazing, they don't give me a job to be a dog".

Of course, a person who was born as a fisherman can do what he is today, he still has the wild intuition in management, otherwise it would not be possible to become big - first of all, he was the village party secretary in their small fishing village, and he was still relatively good at bullying men and women in the countryside.

In Wuyue Province, there are many village party secretaries who started such township enterprises.

For example, in places like Longjing and Jingshan, there is a village party secretary who opens a roasted tea factory in a village, and he has the ability to make outsiders unable to receive local specialty tea, and he puts all the villagers' harvest down at a lower price, processes and sells it after frying, and has a lot of family business over the years.

For example, in the countryside over there, each village has a branch secretary who opens a nut roasting factory, and the specialty walnut shoots can be purchased by foreign competitors.

As for Deng Changchun specifically, the first thing he did when he climbed up was to cheat the diesel subsidy during the fishing moratorium, and he organized the fishing village to work with his hands: to catch those fishermen who were lucky to fish illegally, and to receive firewood subsidies for concealing reports. Afterwards, the villagers with unclean buttocks didn't dare to ask him for it, so he leveled it down and had the first pot of gold in his business.

Even if such a person achieves sales of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, he still has the original thinking mode in his bones.

Although Li Yifeng is not a great lawyer, because he has no status in the law firm, he has a lot of experience in being rushed to take on this kind of rib case, so he knows the virtues of small-scale farmers and entrepreneurs very well.

Hearing that Deng Changchun still looked down on his efforts and ability, Li Yifeng was really unhappy, and said in his heart that there was really no reason to talk about this kind of peasant entrepreneur:

If such a person commits a crime, he has to hire a lawyer to exonerate him, and it is estimated that he will be completely acquitted, and he will be satisfied with the money and feel that the lawyer is worth it. If the lawyer works hard and finally only gets a light sentence for a crime, I am afraid that he will not be happy.

At the moment, he also felt that there was not much oil and water, and he was too lazy to please customers, so he said neither humbly nor arrogantly:

"Mr. Deng, I hope you recognize the reality, your opponent is currently doing very well, and has won a lot of similar and similar anti-counterfeiting cases across the country! Although it stands to reason, your trademark is just a bit similar to L's godmother's, and legally it is confused or not, it is between the two. But in practice, the courts are easily influenced by the thinking of the earlier case, although our country is not a case law ......"

What Li Yifeng said is absolutely the truth.

Although Huaxia is not a case law country in the common law system, no matter which country in the world, it is impossible for judges to ask the clerk to type out the stinky and long judgment documents word by word every time when they draft them.

The general routine bridge, think about it, you know that it is CTRLC+CTRLV.

The preliminary work that Feng Jianxiong did before provoking this lawsuit, although he has not finally kicked in the door and pushed L's godmother to the throne of "famous", but it has been able to play a big role in the fight against counterfeiting.

After talking about it for a long time, trying to make the client realize the seriousness of the problem.

Deng Changchun was finally a little impatient, but he also knew that he couldn't force himself, so he showdown and said: "Then tell me, how should this case be handled according to what you said?"

Li Yifeng hurriedly analyzed: "This case, according to the current "Trademark Law" and relevant judicial interpretations, this is what it is:

First of all, your trademarks, although they also have words like 'godmother' in them, and the icons are very similar to each other, but they are not 100% the same after all.

Secondly, when your trademarks were first registered, they were also legal - the other party had already registered 'L Godmother' under Class 30 of the Nice Trademark Classification List earlier than you, but Class 29 had not yet had time to be jointly registered. However, before the other party's Class 30 was opened and Class 29 was not used, you took advantage of your advantage of 'sufficient evidence of actual use' at that time to maliciously preemptively register it.

Therefore, theoretically, if the other party is not well-known, you can't 'cross-class protection' to squeeze out your 'malicious registration' in other classes.

The problem now is that the other party is likely to be famous, and the posture is almost ready. If the court were to deal with the analogy this time, according to the existing law, you would be limited to 'continue to use it only within the scope of prior use that is evidenced by evidence, but not to expand the use' - my main focus now is to help you collect and improve the chain of evidence, and prove the scope of your 'prior actual use' for the court to accept." ”

The relevant provisions of the Trademark Law are not what many laymen think, as if a trademark becomes well-known and can be very domineering to destroy all similar and confusing trademarks.

In fact, the law leaves an excuse for "protection prior use".

FOR EXAMPLE, THE DOMESTIC IPHONE TRADEMARK CASE IN HISTORY IN 09 IS SUCH A TYPICAL EXAMPLE: APPLE'S IPHONE TRADEMARK WAS ONLY RECOGNIZED AS A "WELL-KNOWN TRADEMARK" IN CHINA IN 2009, THAT IS, IT CAN BE DOMINEERING ACROSS CLASSES TO EXTERMINATE ALL CONFUSION.

HOWEVER, IN 2007, WHEN THE IPHONE HAD JUST BEEN RELEASED ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE OCEAN AND HAD NOT YET ENTERED THE CHINESE MARKET, A DOMESTIC LEATHER GOODS COMPANY HAD PREEMPTIVELY REGISTERED THE "IPHONE" TRADEMARK UNDER THE 18TH CATEGORY OF "LEATHER GOODS, BAGS AND UMBRELLAS".

APPLE IS OF COURSE AN INTERNATIONAL GIANT THAT ATTACHES GREAT IMPORTANCE TO INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION, AND QIAO LAO THIEF WILL NOT MAKE THE LOW-LEVEL MISTAKE OF "FORGETTING TO REGISTER THE IPHONE TRADEMARK IN SOME COUNTRIES".

BUT THE PROBLEM IS THAT AT THAT TIME, APPLE DID NOT MAKE LEATHER GOODS IN THE APPROVAL OF ITS BUSINESS SCOPE IN CHINA, SO EVEN IF IT WANTED TO REGISTER THE 18TH CLASS TRADEMARK OF IPHONE, IT WAS NOT QUALIFIED.

So. APPLE HAS ONLY DONE "TO REGISTER THE IPHONE TRADEMARK IN CLASS 9 (ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS), CLASS 38 (TELECOMMUNICATIONS/COMMUNICATIONS), AND CLASS 42 (INTERNET TECHNOLOGY) IN ALL COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD" (THAT IS, WHAT IS ALLOWED IN THE BUSINESS SCOPE OF APPLE'S BUSINESS LICENSE, ALL OF WHICH ARE NOTED AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE)

THEN, THE LEATHER GOODS COMPANY THAT PREEMPTIVELY REGISTERED THE 18TH CATEGORY OF IPHONE SOLD THE "IPHONE BRAND LEATHER PHONE CASE" IN CHINA FOR SEVERAL YEARS.

APPLE COULD ONLY STARE DRYLY UNTIL 09 YEARS IPHONE4 BEGAN TO ENTER CHINA, BECAUSE THE SALES WERE GOOD ENOUGH, RESULTING IN THE IPHONE TRADEMARK WAS SUCCESSFULLY RATED AS NATIONALLY FAMOUS.

After becoming famous, Apple has free up its hands to clean up this rival. THEY FILED A LAWSUIT WITH THE COURT ON THE GROUNDS THAT "IPHONE IS A WELL-KNOWN TRADEMARK IN THE COUNTRY," DEMANDING THAT "NOT ONLY SHOULD OTHERS NOT COUNTERFEIT IPHONE BRAND MOBILE PHONES, ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS, AND INTERNET TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS," BUT ALSO THAT "ALL BRANDS WITH IPHONE AS A TRADEMARK SHOULD NOT BE IMITATED," AND THAT THOSE WHO SELL LEATHER COVERS SHOULD ALSO BE BLOCKED.

However, the case ended in the Beijing Second Intermediate People's Court in favor of Apple.

THE CAUSE OF THE CASE IS THAT "WHEN THE OTHER PARTY STARTED SELLING IPHONE BRAND LEATHER MOBILE PHONE CASES IN 07, YOUR IPHONE TRADEMARK WAS NOT WELL-KNOWN AT THAT TIME, SO THE COMPANY THAT LEGALLY REGISTERED AND SOLD THE SETS IN 07 CONSTITUTED 'PRIOR BONA FIDE USE', WHICH DID NOT BELONG TO 'TOUCHING PORCELAIN AND RUBBING HEAT'." ”

IN THE END, APPLE ONLY GOT A RIGHT TO "ORDER THE DEFENDANT NOT TO CONTINUE TO EXPAND PRODUCTION, INCREASE CATEGORIES, AND EXPAND THE MARKET AFTER THE IPHONE TRADEMARK HAS BECOME FAMOUS".

In other words, after Apple sued the case, the leather goods factory that preemptively registered just couldn't "increase the production to 200,000 units per month, which used to produce 100,000 units per month".

Or you can't "invest in two more pipelines from one line to two".

Nor can "before the other party is famous, we only entered the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei market, and now we want to develop new dealers to the whole country."

NOT TO MENTION THAT "WE ONLY SOLD THESE FEW STYLES OF MOBILE PHONE CASES, BUT NOW WE ARE READY TO DEVELOP NEW STYLES AND EXPAND OUR BUSINESS TO IPHONE BRAND WALLETS."

In a word, that is, before the other party gets the well-known point in time, anything that the hot party does, the scope, output, style, and which step of development it has, must be frozen at the moment when the other party is famous.

Any new infringement after the well-known will be severely cracked down.

The reason for this regulation is that the "R&D cost" of the trademark is very low, almost equal to zero - as long as you pat your head, think of a beautiful and beautiful word, and then pay more than 1,000 yuan to register, it will come down.

This is completely different from copyrights and patents, which are mostly obtained through arduous creative labor, invention and research work.

However, trademarks do have significant intangible value, so where do these values come from? Anyone with a discerning eye can see that they are precipitated from the reputation and fame accumulated by the holder's daily operations.

In other words, whether a trademark is worth anything or not has nothing to do with its beautiful words and ornate rhetoric. "Chunlan" is better than "Gree", but the brand of "Gree" is more valuable than "Chunlan", which is because people's air conditioners do well, or sell more and advertise more, which is produced by comprehensive effects.

All this has led to international legislation on trademark protection, which attaches great importance to "protection of prior bona fide use".

Later, in the iPhone case, the defendant's leather goods factory could defend it in this way:

"YOU SAY I'M RUBBING YOUR POPULARITY, HOW CAN YOU PROVE IT? IN '07, COULD THE IPHONE BE LEGALLY BOUGHT IN MAINLAND CHINA? DID YOU ADVERTISE ON A DOMESTIC TV STATION, CAN YOU GET AN INVOICE FOR ADVERTISING EXPENSES IN CHINA? NEITHER OF THESE TWO ITEMS, AND IT IS NOT "FAMOUS", WHY DO YOU SAY THAT THE IPHONE IS FAMOUS IN CHINA?

"If it weren't for my brother selling iPhone brand mobile phone cases in China, maybe the Chinese people wouldn't know the IPHONE trademark! What? Do you think I knew that there was a brand called IPHONE in Mi at that time? Of course I don't know! I'm a leather bag seller! What is it? I never heard of it at the time! So you Apple should thank our leather bag company for selling mobile phone cases for two years and helping you warm up the brand in China! It's good not to ask you to collect money!"

Even though Old Thief Qiao had 10,000 MMPs to say in his heart at that time, he couldn't say anything in the face of this kind of defense.

BECAUSE LEGALLY, IF YOU HAVE NO SALES (HISTORICALLY, IPHONE TO THE 4TH GENERATION OFFICIALLY ENTERED THE COUNTRY AS AN OPERATOR, YOU CAN BUY A HONG KONG BANK BEFORE, BUT YOU CAN ONLY PLAY AS A GAME CONSOLE, BECAUSE THERE IS NO MEID (NETWORK ACCESS LICENSE) OF A DOMESTIC OPERATOR), IF YOU WANT TO PROVE THAT YOU ARE FAMOUS, YOU ONLY HAVE THE STRONGEST EVIDENCE OF "WELL-KNOWN TRADEMARK".

IF IT'S NOT A "WELL-KNOWN TRADEMARK", EVEN IF 1 BILLION PEOPLE TALK ABOUT IPHONE EVERY DAY, LEGALLY SPEAKING, YOU JUST DON'T HAVE A NAME.