The Regulation Of Parody In Trademark Law

Parody, originally used in the copyright law, means a piece of writing or musicthat copies a particular well-known style in an amusing way. A trademark, as a sign todistinguish the source of goods or services, was nothing to do with parody because ithas no expressive meaning in itself. However, as more and more enterprises attach toomuch importance to brand impacts, the trademarks, especially those famous ones,gradually embody abundant cultural senses and become the targets of parody. Parodyinevitably conflicts with trademark rights, therefore, many trademark infringementdisputes accompany.Parody is a way to exercise the right of expression freedom, which is guaranteedin the Constitution of many countries, but parody cannot be protected absolutely. Thus,how to balance expression freedom and trademark right is a seriously significant issuein the trademark law. In the United States, the study of trademark parody hasdeveloped a body of theory, and there is a whole set of measures to regulate iteffectively. In contrast, our trademark laws have no article about parody and therelevant provisions are too simple to solve trademark parody cases legitimately today.So, the aim of this thesis is to offer some proposals in order to regulate parodyeffectively in China by means of discussing and analysing the correlative legislation,cases, and theories of trademark confusion, trademark dilution, and fair use. The bacisstructure of the thesis is as follows:The first part is an overview of trademark parody that consists of two parts. Part one introduces the definition, features, and compositional elements of trademarkparody. Part two explains the rational grounds for parody from three perspectives.The second chapter, focusing on theory of trademark confusion and delusion,analyses several trademark parody cases and the correlative provisions, which showsthe course of continuous development of regulation of parody in the United States.The last part puts forward a series of improvement proposals, includingintroduction of the definition, classification, elements of trademark parody, andimprovement in relative legal system of trademark confusion, dilution and fair use inthe trademark laws, and effective measures in judicial practice, in order to find asolution for disputes of trademark parody in China.