Research On Legal Issues Of Trademark Coexistence

From the view of historical origins, trademark coexistence system first came up at the beginning of last century in the United States, and then it was developed vigorously through the legislative and judicial practice in different countries and regions all over the world. Since trademark coexistence involves complex legal relations, there are a lot of debates about it in both the fields of theory and practice, which leads to the different judgment standards between the law enforcement agencies and judicial authorities. This will damage not only the litigants’ legal rights and interests, but also the authority of law. Therefore, in order to further sort out the problems concerned with trademark coexistence as well as set up and improve its basic theoretical system, this thesis makes a systematic and in-depth research on the legal issues of trademark coexistence, which will have both theoretical value and practical significance. This thesis is structurally composed of five chapters as follows.Chapter One is an exploration of basic concepts of or related to trademark coexistence, with the purpose to analyze its theoretical development and construct a systematic research framework based that. As is mentioned above, there are a lot of theoretical debates about trademark coexistence among scholars, even some basic but key theoretical issues such as its connotation, extension, type, and cause, etc. haven’t been clearly defined and sorted out yet and there is no consensus on these issues both in the field of theory and practice. Therefore, it is quite necessary to carry out a research on the basic issues of trademark coexistence. Thus, in this chapter, the author first analyzes and compares various definitions of trademark coexistence and then put forward his own views and opinions. In addition, the author also conducts a thorough and comprehensive analysis on some basic but key issues of trademark coexistence such as its causes, types, and so on.Chapter Two mainly focuses on the multidimensional interpretations of the justification of trademark coexistence. Discussion and argumentation on the justification of the trademark coexistence is an important and unavoidable problem in the study of legal issues related to trademark coexistence, which is also the logical premise to get on the further and deep research into the legal issues concerned. In this chapter, the author makes a deep analysis on the justification of trademark coexistence mainly from the perspectives of jurisprudence, economics of law, competition law and so on. For example, we uses some basic legal beliefs such as the principle of interest balance, fairness and justice as well as certain economic theories like the cost benefit principle to expound the reasonableness of the trademark coexistence, thereby to reveal its important legal value and social value.Chapter Three discusses the judgment standards of trademark honest concurrent use. Typology is an important but difficult point in the study of trademark coexistence. The types of trademark coexistence are diverse and complex. Among them, trademark honest concurrent use is an important one, which is also a point elaborated detailed in this thesis. Currently, the judgment standards of "honest" in trademark honest concurrent use are diverse. However, with the "Internet+" prevailing, on the one hand, the original judgment standard about "honest" should be adjusted appropriately to match with the times, and on the other hand, the concept of "Remote market" and the way to use trademark as well should also be redefined.Chapter Four is the legal analysis on the agreement coexistence of trademark. Agreement coexistence is another type of trademark coexistence. This chapter first clarifies the definition and legal nature of coexistence agreement. Then, considering the fact that the judgment standard of agreement content is closely related to the legal validity of coexistence agreement, it also analyzes the attitudes of different countries to the effect of coexistence agreement and their practices from the perspective of comparative law. In addition, this chapter also proposes that we should conduct a substantive review of the details in trademark coexistence agreement according to such laws as contract law, antitrust law and other relative laws or regulations, so as to decide whether the trademark coexistence agreement is valid or not.Chapter five is about the imperfections and improvements of trademark coexistence system in China. In 2013, the judgment standard of "likelihood of confusion" on trademark was clearly established in the new Trademark Law Article 57 (2), which offers the theoretical possibility for the Legal coexistence of trademark. Trademark Law Article 59 (3) is about the right of prior use of trademark, and the enactment of this clause officially declared the trademark coexistence system was, by legislate, established. However, the legal system of trademark coexistence in China is in general imperfect and needs to be improved. Generally speaking, the imperfections and ways to improve it can be classified as the following three points. First of all, the specific provisions in Trademark Law Article (3), i.e. the specific application of the prior use right of Trademark as the form of trademark coexistence should be further clarified. For example, we should make a deeper analysis on some unclear problems like the determination of "certain effect", the definition of "original scope of application", and the appropriate extent of "additional distinguishing marks" and then put forward the basis and standards to solve these problems. Second, we should come up with the reasons and advice to remedy the gap of the trademark coexistence agreement in the "Trademark Law". Third, in order to respond to the grate impact made by the "Internet+", the author also brought forward relative suggestions and solutions to the trademark coexistence problems in the Internet environment.In conclusion, in the environment of market economy especially the "Internet+", with the commercial activities extremely active and market changing rapidly, trademark coexistence is also becoming diversified and complex. Thus there is still a long way for us to go to conduct a systematic study on trademark coexistence, and this is exactly the reason why this thesis began, too. The trademark coexistence is short of theoretical support at present, which results in a lot of confusions in legal practice. In view of this, this thesis not only fully reveals the internal mechanism of trademark coexistence, but also completely interprets its external operating environment with an attempt to scientifically and systematically analyze the legal principles related to trademark coexistence and seek for the solutions to the issues in operation.