How To Recycle Idle Trademarks?

In recent years, China's trademark registration applications have been continuously improved. In 2015, 2 million 876 thousand applications for trademark registration were received, 4.12 times in 2008, ranking 14 in the world for the first time in a row. But with the increasing awareness of intellectual property rights in enterprises, we have to face the fact that the actual utilization rate of registered trademarks in China is less than half of the registered volume.

According to the authoritative data of the State Intellectual Property Office in 2015, there are 53% idle trademarks in the mainland of China. Although the number of trademark registrations in China still keeps increasing trend, as a non renewable resource, trademark resources will gradually dry up. The idle trademarks of "nominal" will cause huge waste of resources.

Idle trademark refers to a registered trademark which has never been used or is not used for a long time after obtaining the exclusive right of trademark.

The reasons why such registered trademarks are left idle are mainly in the following aspects:

1, because of changes in the scope of operation, restructuring, bankruptcy, trademark registrants' death or termination, the enterprises ignore the treatment of trademarks and lead to unmanaged trademarks.

2, because the brand development, product sales and other reasons are shelved by the enterprise no longer used trademarks;

3, individuals or enterprises maliciously registered as investment trademarks;

4, the defensive trademark registered by the famous company for protecting the brand.

Trademarks belong to the intangible assets of enterprises. They should be of great value. However, if they are not used for a long time, they will make the registered trademarks in the idle state of "nominal", not only can not produce the value of the registered trademarks, give full play to their proper functions and functions, but also affect other people's application for registration and use of their trademarks which are identical or similar. How to dispose of the idle trademarks will become a major problem to be solved in the industry.

The forty-ninth provision of China's trademark law stipulates that Registered trademark Any unit or individual may apply to the Trademark Office for cancellation of the registered trademark for three consecutive years without any valid reason. This means that although the idle trademark is a trademark registrant, it will be in danger of being revoked for three consecutive years without using it.

Trademark cancellation includes two applications, namely, the cancellation of the application and the cancellation of the trademark office voluntarily. When a trademark registrant does not want to use his registered trademark again, he may apply for cancellation to the trademark office. The Trademark Office's active cancellation is mainly the following:

For the validity period of the trademark, the company has not applied for renewal. registration procedures The fortieth provision of the Trademark Law of the people's Republic of China stipulates: "when a registered trademark is valid and expired, it shall apply for renewal of registration within twelve months before the expiration of the registration period. If it fails to make an application within this period, it may give a six month extension period. If the application has not been made at the end of the extension, the registered trademark shall be cancelled. "

In addition, the forty-ninth provision of China's trademark law stipulates that "when a trademark registrant changes the registered trademark, the name or address of the registrant, or other registration matters in the process of using the registered trademark, the local administrative department for Industry and Commerce shall order it to make corrections within a prescribed time limit, and the Trademark Office shall cancel its registered trademark if the term of registration is not corrected."

The Trademark Office has the right to cancel the two unused trademarks arising from the omission of trademark registrants.

A trademark caused by the neglect of the handling of a trademark in a particular case Idle situation During the period of validity of the trademark, if the trademark is to be retained, the trademark registrant may renew and change the trademark according to the fortieth and forty-one provisions of the trademark law, so as to avoid the situation where the Trademark Office has been voluntarily cancelled by an unregistered person.

The forty-second provision of China's trademark law stipulates that the registered trademark owner may transfer his registered trademark to others within the scope permitted by law. An average of 13 months to apply for a registered trademark and a risk of being rejected by the State Trademark Office for similar reasons. The trademark transfer takes only 6~10 months. The transferred trademark itself is a registered trademark already approved by the State Trademark Office. There is no possibility of dismissing the trademark, and the risk is small. For enterprises requiring trademark, the benefits of trademark transfer are not self evident.