The goal of this assign is learn the trademark law, and two foreign trademark infringement cases in China will be analyse relate to Chinese law. All sources are from academic databases, books and online report which related to the Chinese Commercial Law.
Trademarks In China
Introduction
What are Trademarks?
Trademark is a sign – a logo, a name, a word, a symbol or a combination thereof — used within economic activities by a producer or vendor to identify a particular product or service. In other words, it is a ‘distinctive sign’ that enables offerings of goods or services to be–more or less consistently–differentiated, and consequently enables consumers to distinguish between different goods and recognise their preference. These attributes make trademark an extremely powerful economic device. 1 The essential function or role of a Trademark is creating distinctiveness thereby enabling differentiation between brands. To sum up it can be said that a trademark is a legally- protected word or symbol that is used to identify a business entity.
The primary reasons for the existence and protection of trademarks thus can be identifies as:
(1) To protect the public, by way of giving them confidence that, in purchasing a product bearing a particular trademark which it favourably knows, it will get the product which it asks for and wants to get.
(2) To Protect the owner of a trademark who has spent energy, time, and money in presenting to the public the product in a particular form, thus his investment is accorded protection from its misappropriation by pirates and cheats who may try to reap benefit out of his hard work and investments.