China News Service, April 24. He Zhimin, deputy director of the State Intellectual Property Office, revealed on the 24th that in the first quarter of this year, the State Intellectual Property Office rejected 12,200 malicious hoarding of trademarks and 1,628 malicious squatting trademarks in the review process. There were 707 voluntary invalidation declarations.
On the 24th, the State Council Information Office held a press conference on the development of China's intellectual property rights in 2021.
A reporter asked a question at the meeting: In the past year, the State Intellectual Property Office has carried out a strong crackdown on abnormal trademark applications. What new deployments has the State Intellectual Property Office made this year in terms of continuing to crack down on malicious trademark registrations?
In this regard, He Zhimin said that in the past year, the State Intellectual Property Office has always maintained a high-pressure situation of severely cracking down on malicious trademark registration, focusing on special campaigns against malicious trademark squatting, and normalizing malicious hoarding of trademarks, and achieved obvious results.
According to statistics, in the whole year of last year, the State Intellectual Property Office has cracked down a total of 482,000 malicious registered trademarks in the trademark examination process, of which 60,400 maliciously hoarded trademarks were voluntarily rejected, and 1,628 maliciously registered trademarks that harmed social and public interests were rejected.
In the trademark opposition review process, a total of 30,000 malicious registered trademarks have been cracked down.
In the follow-up procedure, 1,729 trademarks were declared invalid ex officio, and the number of trademarks invalidated ex officio was five times the total in the past 10 years.
Under high pressure and deterrence, some lawbreakers voluntarily gave up their maliciously registered trademarks. For example, 30 interrelated trading companies in Jiujiang City voluntarily cancelled more than 2,200 maliciously registered trademarks under their names.
He Zhimin pointed out that since this year, the State Intellectual Property Office has continued to crack down on malicious trademark registration.
The "Notice on Continuously Severely Crackdown on Malicious Registration of Trademarks" was issued, with a "zero tolerance" attitude, through measures such as strengthening the focus of rectification, strengthening monitoring and early warning, strengthening system governance, strengthening agency supervision, strengthening credit supervision, and strengthening coordination and cooperation, etc. Accurately crack down on 10 typical behaviors that violate the principle of good faith, violate public order and good customs, seek illegitimate interests, and disrupt the order of trademarks, and actively protect the legitimate rights and interests of market players and social public interests.
In the first quarter of this year, the State Intellectual Property Office rejected 12,200 malicious hoarding of trademarks, 1,628 malicious squatting trademarks, and 707 voluntary invalidation declarations in the review process.
In two batches, 1,742 trademarks, their applicants and their agencies that were maliciously registered for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics were reported and exposed.
He Zhimin also said that in the next step, the State Intellectual Property Office will continue to improve the normalized working mechanism, focus on the goal of high-quality development of trademark work, continue to standardize the behavior of trademark registration applications, and actively help create a good business environment and innovation environment.