Feng Jianxiong pointed to the pile of materials that had just been printed, pointed to the girls and said:

"You see, the hot sauce trademark of 'L Gan Ma' has been used since the mid-to-late 90s, but it was not a registered trademark in the first two or three years - at that time, the L Gan Ma Company in Qiangui Province had repeatedly applied for registration with the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, but was rejected by the Trademark Office on the grounds that 'L Gan Ma is just an ordinary personal title and is not distinctive'.

Later, at the end of the last century, because the brand became bigger and counterfeiting gradually began to appear, the Trademark Office approved the registration application. However, also because it was 'not distinctive', in order to avoid abuse by the trademark applicant, only Class 30 was given at that time, that is, 'beverage cash crops, rice and flour cereal products, pastries, cold drinks, condiments, spices, ......'.

And this Deng Changchun's 'Longsheng Food' applied for the 'seafood godmother' and 'old aunt'...... and other trademarks, which are used to sell pickled foods, not simply 'condiments', so they belong to Class 29 in the Nice Trademark Classification List. At the same time, when this trademark was applied, it was before 'L Godmother' became famous, so it was a legal use. In other words, even if the 'L godmother' in Qiangui Province is already so famous, Deng Changchun is clearly rubbing the popularity of others, but as long as the other party has not been officially recognized as 'nationally famous', Deng Changchun can continue to rub it legally. Because as long as a trademark is not 'nationally famous', it cannot enjoy 'cross-class protection' or 'all-class protection'. ”

Shi Nicole was ignorant, and Zhou Tianyin was embarrassed to ask.

However, Feng Yiji had never studied law in the first place, and she was not ashamed of not knowing it, so she immediately asked: "What kind of messy things? Can people make their own trademarks, and they can not be registered because they are 'not obvious'? After registration, they can only be used for a certain type of product? What is this called? The national law is too unprotective of goodness!"

Feng Jianxiong didn't laugh at his sister, but still explained to the girls very patiently and empathetically: "Things are not as simple as you think. First of all, the reason why the state restricts the registration of trademarks that are suspected of being 'non-significant' is because of the fear of unfair competition.

For example, if there is a liquor seller today, if he maliciously registers a liquor trademark called 'alcohol brand', won't other liquor be able to emphasize its own alcohol attributes in the future? Or it is easy to mislead other consumers to think that the content of 'alcohol' is particularly high in this brand of liquor? For example, if a liquor seller registers a trademark with a place name, won't it be possible for other enterprises to publicize their own origin in the future if the origin of the same brand coincides?

Of course, there are also special cases that have been licensed, for example, Moutai is a geographical name and a 'geographical indication' trademark, but the state-owned 'Moutai Factory' can be licensed to use the 'Moutai' trademark. Another example is that the Hujiang Cigarette Factory produced 'Zhonghua Tobacco', and it is said that it is absolutely impossible for any company to succeed if it wants to put the trademark 'Zhonghua' on other types. However, 'China Tobacco' had been sold for many years before the Trademark Law was enacted, so it was customary to do it for special purposes.

Specific to this case, 'L godmother' was originally a personal title, and people in many places still have the bad habit of recognizing godmother, and hot sauce also has home-made customs in many provinces, so this word is still theoretically easy to be confused, and it is not wrong in principle for the State Trademark Office to restrict the scope of its registration and use. ”

The three girls had never studied the "Trademark Law", and it took more than ten minutes to digest Feng Jianxiong's statement.

Then the girls raised the next question: "Then what do you say about 'registering a trademark is only allowed to be used on a certain category of products'? Listening to the case just now, even the registered trademark on 'condiments' is not protected on 'pickled food', which is too, right?"

"This is actually quite normal, because the difficulty of registering a trademark is too low compared to the application for copyright and patent rights.

To apply for a copyright, it takes at least a lot of effort to write a book, a song, or a piece of software. To apply for a patent, it is necessary to invest a lot of R&D strength. To apply for a trademark, theoretically, you only need to pat your head and think of two words, and then pay a fee of 600 yuan to the State Trademark Office, which is too low.

Therefore, if there is no limit, theoretically, a person can monopolize tens of thousands of beautiful words by spending a few million. And so on, there is no cap, if someone maliciously throws money, soon all the beautiful Chinese character combinations will be used up.

Therefore, in the field of trademark law in various countries, there is a reference to the Nice Trademark Classification, which divides the goods to which the trademark applies (including physical goods and virtual services) into 45 categories. Therefore, even if there is a company registered the trademark "L Gan Ma" to sell condiments today, it does not affect another company to register "L Gan Ma" to sell clothes, and the day after tomorrow there will be another company that also registers "L Gan Ma" to sell cars or software - if this brand of cars and software can be sold. ”

The girls don't seem to understand, but they still feel that the example just now is not quite right: "Cars, clothes and hot sauce are very different, even if they are all called 'L godmother', it is indeed impossible for people to misunderstand 'this L godmother is the other L godmother', but the gap between chili sauce and pickled food is very close, obviously it is almost the same thing......"

Feng Jianxiong smiled and shrugged: "There's no way around it - whether it's the same kind, whether it's similar, it's not for you to judge with common sense in life, the law is to talk about provisions, whether it's the same category, the only criterion is the "Nice Commodity Classification List" has the final say."

The former is Class 30 and the latter is Class 29 on the "Nice Commodity Classification List", and at present, the 'L godmother' in Qiangui Province is not well-known, considering the above points, that is, it is not an infringement - Deng Changchun's legal loophole is reasonable - of course, provided that he did not meet me. ”

After listening to this explanation, Feng Yiji and Zhou Tianyin completely understood.

The "last question" was none other than Nick Sil. Perhaps because she has more experience in doing things with Feng Jianxiong, she has thought of some additional details at the operational level, "We all understand the reasons why trademarks cannot be protected across classes." But since the L godmother in Qiangui Province also knew about this situation at the beginning, why didn't they register the 29th class, the 30th class, and even other classes?"

"It's not that they don't want to, it's probably that they couldn't do it at the time. Feng Jianxiong first concisely put forward the core reason,

"First of all, as I just said, the Trademark Office thinks this is 'not significant', so it must be 'one less batch if it can be approved less'.

Second, even if someone defensively 'co-registers' their own trademarks in order to protect their brand in a domineering way—that is, as you just said, on other types that they have not yet operated—as long as there are other companies that actually operate and use the trademark in those categories that they do not actually operate, the company that registered it will not be able to prove that it actually uses it. Then the actual user also has the right to apply to the State Trademark Office to invalidate the trademark of the person who registered earlier. ”

Shi Nicole thought for a while, and said pitifully: "Brother Xiong...... You're so profound...... Can you translate it in human language?"

Feng Jianxiong sighed helplessly: "Let's take the case just now as an example: suppose that at that time, the genuine L godmother registered both the 30th class of 'condiments' and the 29th class of 'pickled food', but after the registration, the genuine L godmother company actually did not sell 'pickled food', but Deng Changchun's company did."

In this case, Deng Changchun can apply to the State Trademark Office to declare the trademark registered in class 29 of the real L Gan Ma invalid, and the cause of action is 'bad faith registration, but it has not been used for 2 years. ’”

"It turns out that there are still such regulations...... "Shi Nicole digested what she just said, "so how can ordinary companies prove that they use these trademarks?"

Feng Jianxiong said very professionally: "It's very simple, for example, suppose that the genuine L Gan Ma company also sells 'L Gan Ma' brand pickled seafood." Looking for their financial invoices when they usually sell within 2 years, you should be able to find an invoice with the line of "product name" that says "L Gan Ma brand pickled seafood". Or you can find advertisements for 'L Gan Ma brand pickled seafood' in newspapers and on TV. If you don't leave any of these evidence, and your competitors accuse you of 'malicious registration, which is actually useless after registration', then there is no recruitment. ”

Shi Nicole and Zhou Tianyin have already listened to the book of heaven, and they admired Feng Jianxiong's insight so much.

Feng Yiji, who majored in financial accounting, listened to it, and was even more distracted for a while, and said with emotion: "Usually, when I look at most companies selling goods and issuing invoices, they will not be accurate to the product brand, so it's good to write a type by hand." Hearing you say this, I really didn't expect that even in the matter of daily invoicing, there are so many hidden tricks of hidden evidence in trademark protection.

According to your statement, if the real L godmother insists on 'pretending' that she has used this trademark in many product categories, it is actually not impossible to do it. It is estimated that even if what is actually sold is not 'pickled food' but 'hot sauce', as long as there is a business scope of 'pickled food' on the business license, isn't it okay to falsely open this category when issuing invoices?

For example, there is an energy-saving subsidy from the government for selling energy-saving lamps in China, but there is no subsidy for selling non-energy-saving lamps. In order to rebate taxes, Philips is a big brand that obviously sells energy-saving products that are not on the subsidy list, and it is possible to falsely open energy-saving products when invoicing, and domestic brands like NVC are even more undisciplined - and blame the genuine L godmother for not asking you to be a legal and brand strategy consultant earlier, otherwise you must have thought of these tricks just now. ”

In the face of his sister's "not afraid to speculate with the most insidious malice", Feng Jianxiong smiled silently, with an expression of "you know", as if he had thought of it a long time ago.

The girls sighed for a while, and there was no disagreement about basic literacy, and then they thought of asking the final core question yet.

"Then how are you going to deal with that Deng Changchun this time? Is it to help the genuine L godmother company fight counterfeiting? and then collect some litigation fees for trademark rights protection?" the girls asked in unison.

"How can it be so simple! This kind of thing is too untechnical!" Feng Jianxiong said disdainfully, "I said that I wanted to 'direct and act by myself', of course, I wanted to find a way to ask L's godmother to spend a lot of money to help them break through the existing administrative regulations on trademark review and adjudication, and to operate into a 'nationally famous' - this title, many companies that attach importance to brand building, but it is difficult to find a lot of money." When the time comes, Deng Changchun's kind of side-kicking and rubbing the heat will not be wiped out?"

"What are you going to do?"