China News Service, Yinchuan, November 28 (Reporter Yang Di) From the "Xiaoyao Town Hu Spicy Soup Association" suing the merchants to the "Tongguan Roujia Mo Association" charging the merchants the franchise fee, a series of trademark rights protection incidents have triggered the society in the past few days. focus on.
On the 26th of this month, the State Intellectual Property Office responded to the trademark dispute of "Xiaoyao Town" and "Tongguan Roujiamo": "Xiaoyao Town" and "Tongguan Roujiamo" have no right to charge the franchise fee.
At present, the two associations have stopped related rights protection activities, and the trademark rights protection incident has "dust settled".
The State Intellectual Property Office has set the tone, but there are still many similar cases.
According to local media in Kunming, Yunnan, recently, many restaurant operators in Kunming whose names contained the word “glasses” were sued by Bao Mou, the trademark owner of the registered trademark of “glasses”.
The reporter learned that Bao runs a barbecue restaurant called "Glasses Barbecue" in Yinchuan, Ningxia.
According to the China Judgment Documents Network, Bao Mou associates more than 30 disputes involving trademark infringement, and the defendants are restaurants in Xi'an, Harbin, Chongqing, Xiamen, Xining and other cities.
Bao Mou asked the defendant to remove the shop signs and doors with the same or similar signs such as "glasses" in the shop, and claimed tens of thousands of yuan.
Among them, many lawsuits were rejected by the court or the plaintiff withdrew the lawsuit.
At present, the "glasses" trademark owned by Bao has been displayed on the official website of the State Intellectual Property Office as "revocation/invalidation application under review."
On the Internet, many netizens believe that this is a "deliberately touching porcelain" and "malicious lawsuit."
Si Pengfei, a full-time lawyer from Ningxia New Zhongyuan Law Firm, told Chinanews.com that the strength of trademark protection is positively related to its distinctiveness. The stronger the distinctiveness of a trademark, the greater the scope and intensity of its protection.
The scope of Bao’s lawsuit involves catering operators in many parts of the country. The trademark “glasses” involved in the case is a daily term and does not have distinctiveness and popularity. It is difficult for restaurants with the word “glasses” in other regions to be found to be infringing.
This kind of litigation has caused a waste of judicial resources to a certain extent, and may be considered a malicious prosecution.
So, what should be the boundary of trademark rights protection?
"Trademark owners have the right to protect their own interests from being infringed, but they must consider the limits of rights protection." Li Yanan, a lawyer at Ningxia Xinzhongyuan Law Firm, believes that whether trademark rights protection litigation constitutes a malicious litigation needs to be based on subjective intentions, damage results, and cause and effect. Comprehensive consideration of various factors such as relationship.
She suggested that the public can adopt a variety of reasonable ways to defend their rights when they believe that they have been infringed, which not only ensures that their rights are not violated, but also reduces the occupation of judicial resources.
Zhang Xin, deputy director of the Intellectual Property Protection Division of the Ningxia Market Supervision Department, said that intellectual property departments at all levels should strengthen publicity and popularization of intellectual property and trademark protection related legal knowledge to the public, and deal with violations of "malicious rights protection" in strict accordance with laws and regulations; At the same time, we should not "crash food because of choking," and we must protect the legitimate rights and interests of trademark owners and give full play to the local brand effect.
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