A Study On The Distinctiveness Of Sound Trademarks

In today's era of rapid economic development and mass innovation and entrepreneurship,Brand name brings more challenges and opportunities to businesses,but also faces more cruel competition pressure.In order to occupy the market share,improve brand influence and obtain high profit margin,businesses constantly adjust and change their marketing strategy.The producers and sellers make full use of consumers' senses to attract consumers' attention from all aspects,so as to promote the extension of trademark connotation from traditional words,patterns and graphics to tactile,olfactory,auditory and other sensory antennae.On May 1,2014,the Trademark Law(revised in 2013)officially came into effect,and the requirement of registration visibility was cancelled in the trademark elements,which means that the sound sign can be registered as a trademark in China.However,sound trademark is a new thing after all,and it is still in the initial stage of development in China.Compared with the traditional visual trademark,it still has a large space for development in legal theory and system.As the significance of trademark protection soul,if there is no relevant legislative system design,it will not be conducive to the protection of the rights and interests of trademark owners in practice.This paper takes the case of Tencent company's sound trademark identification as the breakthrough point,combined with the current situation of the significance of sound trademark in China,puts forward some suggestions from the macro and micro level,especially from the perspective of inherent distinctiveness and obtaining significance.Therefore,in addition to the introduction,this paper includes the following five parts:The first part analyzes the case of Tencent QQ sound trademark identification,and refines the source of the research problem according to the focus of the case.The second part introduces the basic theoretical knowledge of sound trademark,summarizes the concept,characteristics,classification and manifestation of sound trademark,and divides the significance theory of sound trademark into inherent significance and acquired significance.The third part summarizes the current situation and prominent problems of the significance of sound trademark in China,the current situation of large number of applications but less registration,the lack of legislation and the unclear standard of sound judgment in practice are the difficulties in the research of the significance of sound trademark in China.The fourth part discusses the legislative experience of sound trademark significance in the United States,Australia,the European Union and other countries,in order to learn from the legislative and judicial practice in our country.The fifth part puts forward suggestions to improve the significance of sound trademarks in China,which is the focus and core content of this paper,including inherent distinctiveness,acquiring distinctiveness and preventing confusion of sound trademarks.In terms of inherent distinctiveness,it is proposed to further refine the sound trademark logo itself,distinguish the general sound from the functional sound,and make it clear by negative enumeration;in terms of acquired distinctiveness,it is proposed to make clear the "second meaning" of sound,introduce the overall recognition principle and professional participation system for judgment;and in terms of preventing the confusion of sound trademarks,it is proposed to make clear the "second meaning" of sound It is necessary to clarify the "sound similarity" and establish a sound trademark sample comparison database for improvement.