On The Parallel Use Rules Of Time-honored Brand And Registered Trademark

Our country pays more and more attention to the protection and development of time-honored brand now with the rapid growth of socialist marketing economy and the change of business environment,while currently there doesn't have the special law used for protecting “time-honored brand” in China.As the time-honored brand has a weak consciousness of protecting its own rights,thus the rights conflict between the time-honored brand and registered trademark often happens in practice.The Supreme People's Court has passed No.58 guiding case for explicating the parallel use rules of time-honored brand and registered trademark,while the relevant theories of the above-mentioned rules and the specific application conditions have not been refined yet.Therefore,this article will start from this guiding case,and use case analysis,document analysis,historical analysis,and comparative analysis,etc,to make detailed analysis on the parallel use rules of the time-honored brand and registered trademark involved in the case.This article mainly can be divided into four chapters:Chapter One: elaborate the basic case details and dispute focus of “Tongdefu” case.And it points out the deficiencies of the Supreme People's Court in regard to the interpretation of this case: it is over principled to affirm the forming of unfair competition only through the principle of honesty and credibility,and the theory and application conditions of time-honored brand and registered trademark's parallel use rules need to be refined.Chapter Two: interpret the related concepts and analyze the conflicts between time-honored brand and registered trademark.Through distinguishing these concepts that could be confused easily,such as the shop name,trade name,enterprise name and time-honored brand,etc,to lead to the discussion on the law scope of time-honored brand.Then discuss the causes of conflict between the time-honored brand and registered trademark.Finally analyze in details of the conflicts between the time-honored brand and registered trademark in “Tongdefu” case.Chapter Three: the path selection for solving the conflicts between the time-honored brand and registered trademark.It analyzes the applicative principles and factors need to be considered first when there has the rights conflict between the time-honored brand and registered trademark,then obtains the application conditions for the parallel use rules of time-honored brand and registered trademark through combining the situations of time-honored brand and registered trademark in “Tongdefu” case.