Study On Issues Of The Factors Of The Trans-category Protection Of Well-know Trademarks

A well-known trademark is a trademark with a higher reputation in China, favored and approbated by the public. It contains tremendous business value. Our laws provide a registered well-known trademark a special trans-category protection. In 2001, China started the work of judicial determination and protection of the well-known trademarks. With the developing of the economic and the practice, we have accumulated rich experience of judicial protection of the well-know marks. But there are still some vague, even wrong opinions about the judicial determination and protection of the well-known trademarks in public and some parties'and judges'minds. The standards of the range of judicial determination and protection of the well-known trademarks are not yet unified. How to strengthen the protection of those well-know trademarks that meeting the statutory requirements? How to improve the relevant standards of their trans-category protection? How to prevent the situation of undue expansion of well-known trademarks'trans-category protection? These have become the complex and urgent tasks we have to face. This paper will base on four cases about the registered well-known trademarks'trans-category protection, study on the effects that the well-known trademark's distinctiveness and the range of relevant public bring to the range of well-known trademarks'trans-category protection.The paper consists of two sections. In the section of introduction, the author explained the motivation for writing this article: to propose the correct idea of defining the range of trans-category protection of well-know trademarks and to provide the reference for the practice of judicial though the study on issues of the factors of the trans-category protection of well-know trademarks.In the section of the body of this paper, there are there parts. The first part introduces four cases and the views of courts and sums up the problems caused by those cases, and then point out that there are differences considering factors and standards in difference courts in the cases of trans-category protection of well-know trademarks. The problems relate to tow aspects: the well-known trademark's distinctiveness and the range of relevant public.The second part analysis the problems with the cases deeply. The first section analysis the related theories of the special protection of well-know trademarks, and then identify our theoretical premise. The second section analysis the well-known trademark's distinctiveness, point out the relationship of the distinctiveness and the range of trans-category protection. The third section analysis the definition of relevant public and the effects that the range of relevant public brings to the range of well-known trademarks'trans-category protection.According to the preceding analysis, the third part comes to the conclusion that in defining the range of well-known trademarks'trans-category protection, we should think over the trademark's distinctiveness because the relationship between each other is positive correlation. We also should define the range of relevant public to the range of the allegedly infringing trademark's range, and then provide different degrees of protection to different well-known trademarks according to the different relationships of the relevant public between the plaintiff and the defendant.