□ Our reporter Zhu Ningning
The Trademark Law is the first formal separate law on intellectual property rights in New China, and it is also an important legal system for the socialist market economy.
2024 marks the 41st anniversary of the implementation of the Trademark Law. Since its implementation, the Trademark Law has played an active role in promoting the improvement of the quality of goods and services, safeguarding consumer rights and interests, and ensuring the healthy development of the socialist market economy. But at the same time, it should also be noted that the Trademark Law can no longer meet the requirements of the times for high-quality development and future development needs. Many problems urgently require another comprehensive revision of the Trademark Law to solve them.
The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly stated that we should strengthen the legal protection of intellectual property rights and form a basic system to support comprehensive innovation. The "Outline for Building a Powerful Nation on Intellectual Property (2021-2035)" issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council requires that the trademark law be revised in a timely manner based on actual conditions.
The revision of the Trademark Law has been included in the "Legislative Plan of the 14th National People's Congress Standing Committee". The reporter learned from the recently held National People's Congress Financial and Economic Committee Legislative Liaison Review Work Forum that the State Intellectual Property Office is actively promoting a new round of comprehensive revision of the Trademark Law and its Implementing Regulations.
"The basic idea of amending the Trademark Law is to build a high-level trademark legal system with Chinese characteristics, in line with international trends, adapt to future development, and benefit hundreds of millions of business entities, so as to help build a powerful country with intellectual property rights and high-quality economic and social development." National Intellectual Property Rights The relevant person in charge of the bureau said.
New situations and new issues attract attention
Figures from the State Intellectual Property Office show that the scale and effectiveness of trademark registration in my country have steadily increased. In 2023, there were 4.383 million registered trademarks, and the national trademark pledge financing amount reached 176.91 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 63.5%; it received 6,196 Madrid trademark international registration applications from Chinese applicants, ranking among the top in the world. As of the end of 2023, the number of valid trademark registrations in my country reached 46.146 million.
In recent years, my country's trademark and brand protection has continued to increase, and social satisfaction with intellectual property protection has increased from 64.96 points in 2013 to 82.04 points in 2023. The overall situation has entered a good stage, which strongly supports a good business environment and innovation environment.
However, as my country's economy enters a new stage of development, new situations such as insufficient balance of public interests in the trademark field, insufficient protection of exclusive rights, insufficient use of trademarks, insufficient regulation of malicious registration, abuse of rights and malicious litigation, and low levels of trademark agency services are gradually emerging. , arousing social concern, these problems need to be solved through a new round of comprehensive revision of the trademark law.
There are many issues involved and the scope of modifications is large.
The last comprehensive revision of the Trademark Law dates back to 2013, more than 10 years ago. Since then, in 2019, the Trademark Law has been specially revised. Although it has played an important role in regulating trademark hoarding and strengthening the protection of trademark rights, only six articles have been revised, which cannot comprehensively solve the problems existing in the trademark field.
It is reported that this comprehensive revision of the Trademark Law not only involves many problems, but also has a large scope of modifications. The State Intellectual Property Office systematically sorted out the outstanding issues in the trademark field, drafted the "Draft Revision of the Trademark Law of the People's Republic of China (Draft for Comments)", and publicly solicited opinions from all walks of life from January 13 to February 27, 2023. During the public consultation period, more than 3,400 opinions were received from more than 400 entities.
Subsequently, the State Intellectual Property Office carried out solid demonstration work and put forward preliminary revision plans for more than 30 clauses in regulating bad-faith registration of trademarks, prohibiting repeated registrations, strengthening the protection of well-known trademarks, and raising the entry threshold for trademark agents based on feedback. We will listen to opinions from different entities such as administrative agencies, judicial agencies, academia, practitioners, and domestic and foreign enterprises through discussions, discussions, etc.
On the basis of fully absorbing the opinions of all parties, focusing on six main aspects: serving the high-quality development of the economy, maintaining social fairness and justice, optimizing the trademark authorization and confirmation procedures, strengthening the obligation to use trademarks, strengthening the protection of trademark exclusive rights, and deepening trademark supervision and management, the state The Intellectual Property Office has revised the draft again, forming a relatively mature and complete draft text, and is actively promoting the legislative process.
Coordinate and promote the revision of laws and regulations
The construction of the trademark legal and regulatory system is a systematic project, of which the trademark law is the most basic part. The revision of the trademark law marks a new cycle for the improvement of the entire trademark legal system.
In the next step, the State Intellectual Property Office will use systematic thinking to coordinate and promote the revision of the Trademark Law and its Implementing Regulations in response to the problems discovered in the survey, and enhance the coordination of legal norms. At the same time, we should adhere to a problem-oriented approach, strengthen investigation and research, and focus on the practicality of the trademark legal system. Accurately grasp the laws of economic and social development, take into account future development needs, improve the forward-looking nature of intellectual property legislation, strengthen follow-up research on relevant international treaties in the field of intellectual property, sort out the content in the current system that does not match the requirements of relevant international treaties, and in the trademark law Maintain a certain degree of openness and flexibility during the revision, focusing on the long-term development of the trademark industry. (Legal Daily)