On The Perfection Of China’s Sound Trademark Registration System

Modern people are bombarded with information every day,and their vision is already exhausted.More and more businesses begin to turn their marketing positions to the auditory field.Some international luxury giants such as Chanel,Hermes and Dior begin to create their own podcast programs,trying to establish a closer connection with consumers through sound.Sound trademark has become an important part of enterprise brand strategy.The long-running QQ prompt case,which relied on the strongest legal team in the Eastern Hemisphere,turned the tide and brought the sound trademark into the public eye.The failure to register Li Jiaqi’s "Oh my god,buy it,buy it,buy it" mantra added to the hot search.Obviously,the traditional trademark can not meet the urgency of domestic businesses to seize the auditory market gradually,but in response to this urgency,the sound trademark registration examination system of our country "tigers in the road".According to statistics,since China recognized the registrability of sound trademarks in 2014,a total of 895 sounds applications have been registered by May2022,only 35 sounds have been registered,the registration rate is less than 4%,much lower than the United States,the European Union,Japan and other countries in the same period.Mainly developed countries and regions in the world have adopted the standard of combining inherent significance and acquisition significance to recognize the sound trademark,and the standard of prominent recognition of the sound trademark registration examination has always had disputes in the academic circles.Early scholars,such as He Lianhong and He Wentao,suggested that following the international trend,the identification criteria of inherent significance and acquired significance should be adopted,but only the acquired significance criterion was adopted in Chinese practice.n 2016,the former State Administration for Industry and Commerce proposed in the revised Standards for Trademark Examination and Adjudication that,under normal circumstances,sound can be distinguished only after long-term use,which actually admitted the single standard of "obtaining distinctness" in the examination of sound trademarks in a disguised way.Subsequently,Wang Lianfeng,Niu Dongfang two scholars for the practice of the identification of the legal basis for the completion.Hu Pin began to try to establish the basic principles for the recognition of the significance of non-traditional trademarks,including sound trademarks,based on the criterion of obtaining the significance.The author believes that the inherent distinctiveness of denying sound trademark in Chinese practical circles is an important reason for the difficult phenomenon of sound trademark registration.Even in the view of the judge in Beijing’s intellectual property Court,Drea Songyan,the standard of recognition for non-traditional trademarks such as sound trademarks is adopted in practice,and it is "much more difficult" to register sound trademarks.The Trademark Examination Guidelines formulated by the State Intellectual Property Office,which came into effect in January2022,also signal that the examination criteria for the registration of sound trademarks are significant.Since the conclusion has been made in the application of significance,this article is to study how to improve the sound trademark registration under the existing laws and regulations framework,so as to solve the problem that the sound trademark registration is "difficult".Specific attempts are to "loosen" the sound trademark registration examination system by introducing the public participation system.