【Dharma Eye View】

"The horse gathers the source on the head, and the feet step on the inline to rise. Wearing Ruifuxiang, the waist is wrapped around the four constants." This old Beijing folk song vividly reflects the weight of the time-honored brands in the hearts of the people, and also confirms the glorious history of these time-honored brands.

With unique cultural traditions, unique business concepts, and exclusive processing techniques, many time-honored brands have survived for centuries.

They are infiltrated with profound historical heritage, carry excellent traditional culture, and also show rich economic and cultural value.

However, with the development of time-honored enterprises, intellectual property disputes involving time-honored brands such as trademark ownership disputes, "free riders", and proximity to famous brands have occurred from time to time, which have become obstacles affecting the development of time-honored brands.

In recent years, the protection of time-honored brands has received increasing attention.

The "Outline of Building a Powerful Country with Intellectual Property Rights (2021-2035)" issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council proposes to strengthen the protection of well-known trademarks and develop and inherit traditional brands and time-honored brands.

Time-honored brands are the "golden signs" of economic development.

When a time-honored brand encounters a new problem of intellectual property disputes, how should it be dealt with?

How can time-honored enterprises enhance their awareness and ability to protect intellectual property rights, and how can the whole society protect their century-old ingenuity through the rule of law?

1. The time-honored brand encounters the dilemma of being infringed

Case: "Xisi Baozipu" is a century-old local brand in Beijing. Its predecessor was Eryouju Restaurant.

In March 2015, after being closed for many years, Huatian Group authorized its subsidiary Huatian Eryouju to be responsible for the restoration and operation and development of the "Xisi Baozipu" brand.

In 2019, Huatian Eryouju found that there were several "Xisi Baozi shops" in Beijing. One of them was a Xisi Baozi shop operated by Haiyuange Company. The shop was located on Xisi North Street, Xicheng District. Beijing Taste".

Huatian Eryouju sued Haiyuange Company to the court and won both the first and second instance.

　　"'Xisi Baozipu' has continued to operate as a store signboard. After long-term use and historical precipitation, it has formed a relatively rich brand value and carries a unique goodwill." Beijing Intellectual Property Court Judge Fan Miduo pointed out that although Huatian Group It has not continued to operate the brand for a long time, but "Xisi Baozipu" still has a certain influence and high popularity in recent years.

Haiyuange Company's behavior such as marking "the taste of Beijing in memory" on the store signboard has the intention of clinging to goodwill and confusing the market, and its behavior constitutes unfair competition.

　　Not long ago, this case was released by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court as a typical case involving time-honored brands.

It is understood that from the establishment of the hospital in 2014 to May 2022, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court has concluded 490 cases involving time-honored brands, including 393 administrative cases and 97 civil cases.

　　Song Yushui, vice president of Beijing Intellectual Property Court, pointed out that the above-mentioned cases related to time-honored brands focus on administrative cases of trademark authorization and confirmation, trademark infringement and civil cases of unfair competition, involving a wide range of industries and regions, especially food, catering, culture and art, and medicine. Most industries.

Such as "Niulanshan" liquor, "Green Yangchun" tea, "Sanduoxuan" four treasures of the study, "Tongjitang" medicine and so on.

Among them, 338 cases involved time-honored Chinese brands recognized by the Ministry of Commerce, and 155 cases involved local time-honored brands, covering the whole country.

　　During the interview, the reporter learned that the logos of time-honored brands, corporate logos, and business activity logos are clinging to, imitated, or maliciously registered by others, accounting for nearly 50% of the cases involving time-honored brands.

It is mainly manifested in unauthorized use of the same or similar logos as the time-honored brand, such as product name, packaging, decoration, etc., or squatting it as a company name, trademark or domain name, or applying for registered trademarks on different goods or services for the same time-honored brand.

Taking "Xisi Baozipu" as an example, on Meituan, Ele.me and other takeaway platforms, "Original Xisi Baozipu", "Peiping Xisi Baozipu" and "Memory Xisi Baozipu" are listed one after another. Which one is authentic? , it is difficult for consumers to distinguish.

2. It is the key to enhance the "internal strength" of time-honored brands

Case: "Lei Yun Shang Song Fen Tang" is a time-honored brand with a history of 300 years.

In January 2013, "Lei Yunshang" was applied for registration as a trademark by a pharmaceutical group company.

A pharmaceutical company in the western region believed that the behavior was malicious squatting and filed a request for invalidation.

The State Intellectual Property Office ruled to support it.

The court held that the above two companies both originated from the time-honored brand "Lei Yunshang Songfentang", and both used "Lei Yunshang" as the core logo to sell drugs for a long time.

A pharmaceutical group company applied for registration of the disputed trademark without the subjective intention of seizing the goodwill of others, so the State Intellectual Property Office was ordered to make a new ruling.

　　"The brand name, also known as the trade name, is the identifying part of the enterprise name. The time-honored brand name is the name of the enterprise with a long history." Li Yufeng, dean of the School of Civil and Commercial Law (School of Intellectual Property), Southwest University of Political Science and Law, pointed out that according to the Ministry of Commerce's "China Time-honored Brand Recognition Standards" ”, the time-honored brand refers to the brand that was founded before 1956, has products, skills or services that have been passed down from generation to generation, has a distinctive traditional Chinese cultural background and profound cultural heritage, and has been widely recognized by the society and formed a good reputation.

　　At present, unclear ownership has become the biggest legal challenge for the protection and utilization of intellectual property rights of time-honored brands.

Such disputes are mainly manifested as: in the process of complex historical changes, due to the separation of the founder and the owner, there are ownership disputes arising from the joint use of different business entities; Disputes caused by ownership disputes between others who use the time-honored brand; some time-honored brands have not been used for a long time, and have been applied for trademark registration by others, resulting in ownership disputes.

　　In reality, many time-honored brands lack strategic planning for intellectual property protection and fail to establish a brand defense and protection system in a timely manner.

How can time-honored brands enhance their "internal strength" in protecting intellectual property?

Li Yufeng believes that time-honored brand enterprises should take the initiative to arrange intellectual property rights for their distinctive brand size components and technological processes, and form an effective prevention mechanism; in the Internet environment, use new media to actively promote their own brand names to expand brand effects. ; In the big data environment, use emerging methods to detect the trend of time-honored products to prevent counterfeit products from flooding the market.

3. Use the rule of law to help time-honored brands last forever

Case: Recently, an Internet company was fined 780,000 yuan for selling products that violated the exclusive right to the registered trademark of "Louwailou".

"Louwailou" is a well-known time-honored food company in Hangzhou.

At the beginning of this year, the Hangzhou Xiaoshan District Market Supervision Bureau investigated and found that after receiving a report, an Internet company opened a flagship store of "Xihulouwailou" on the Tmall platform at the end of 2021, selling 14 food gift box products. Both are marked with "West Lake Building Outer Building", which is similar to the brand trademark of "Louwailou".

According to statistics, "West Lake Building Outer Building" completed more than 900 orders and made a profit of 159,200 yuan.

　　According to statistics, there are more than 1,100 time-honored enterprises in China, among which there are only a handful of old stores with a history of more than 150 years.

Among the more than 1,000 time-honored enterprises, some are booming, while others are barely maintaining the status quo...

　　Beijing Changchun Tang, a time-honored brand in China, currently has 9 stores in continuous operation.

In the opinion of the company's CEO Wei Wei, this time-honored brand that has been in business for 227 years has encountered a lot of obstacles in terms of trademarks: the Trademark Law promulgated in 1982 prohibits the registration of geographical names as trademarks. Since Changchun Hall contains geographical names, it has been unable to Registered as a trademark.

However, the meaning of Changchun Hall is "Changchun is not old".

　　"The lack of protection and inheritance is one of the reasons for the weak successor of time-honored brands." At the National Two Sessions in 2020, He Yunao, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, once brought a proposal on the revitalization of China's time-honored brands.

He believes that the relevant departments should further strengthen the protection of the heritage of time-honored brands, strictly enforce the protection of intellectual property rights and corporate trademarks of time-honored brands in accordance with the law, formulate and issue special regulations and measures to protect, inherit and develop the heritage of time-honored brands, and effectively solve the problems of survival and development of time-honored brands. difficulties in development.

Lu Luanmei, a representative of the National People's Congress, also submitted a proposal, arguing that the right to name and trademark should be managed collaboratively, and the criteria for judging the infringement of the right to name should be established.

　　At present, strengthening the protection of time-honored brands has entered the fast lane.

In January this year, an opinion on promoting the innovation and development of time-honored brands was jointly issued by eight departments including the Ministry of Commerce and the State Intellectual Property Office.

The opinions propose to strengthen the construction of the rule of law for the protection of time-honored brands, study and improve the relevant systems for the protection and management of time-honored brands, promote the establishment of a time-honored brand directory management mechanism, and improve the protection and promotion system for time-honored brands.

In terms of protecting the intellectual property rights of time-honored brands, the opinions propose to establish and improve the sharing mechanism of time-honored brand directories, severely crack down on infringements of time-honored brand rights, name rights and other infringing and illegal acts, and support time-honored brand enterprises to carry out overseas intellectual property protection.

　　It is the judiciary's duty to protect time-honored brands.

"We will further strengthen the coordination and connection with administrative law enforcement, intensify the management of the source of complaints, and pool our strengths to crack down on violations of laws and regulations that infringe on the intellectual property rights of time-honored brands from the source, so as to play a good role in the protection of the line of defense." Song Yushui said.

(Reporter Jin Hao)