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General Situation of Trademark Registration

Trademark registration is limited by regional：

Trademark registration is limited by regional. Registered Trademark can only get protection at their registered country, unless they get their trademark registration through Madrid System.

Trademark Registration brings:

	A successful trademark can bring the trademark owner goodwill. This not only followed a huge profit, and also promotes trademark owner’s business. In order to protect your own intelligent right, register your trademark is a must.
	Once a trademark application approved, the applicant will have the exclusive right for the trademark. If there is any tort against a register trademark, the trademark owner can take legal action to stop the tort and ask for indemnity. So the best protection method is to get trademark registered.

Legal Protection

Legal protection for registered trademark can be divided into four main types

Settle by negotiation

Before taking any legal action against tort, two parties can carry out negotiation to settle the dispute. If the two parties cannot reach any agreement, the trademark owner can take further action against tort that listed below.

Administration Punishment

If a registered trademark owner discovers any tort against their trademark, they can report it to Trademark Office. This will then forward to related department, once they judge it is a tort, they will take action to order the tortfeasor to stop the tort, confiscate and destroy related product, and penalty may also set for the torteasor. If the tortfeasor refuses to follow the order, related department can apply for court enforcement.

Prosecution

Prosecution helps to look for civil judgment and indemnify against infringement. The whole process included investigation, sue, judge and reinforcement, etc. Normally the indemnify will be the profit of the infringer or the loss of the trademark owner within the infringement period, and all fee for the legal action will also be born by the infringer.

Prosecution can be divided into five different groups:

（1）、	Indemnity for any economy loss due to infringement production.
	Indemnity for any economy loss due to infringement production.Infringer means anyone who product same or similar class and used a registered and similar to a registered trademark, without the permission of the trademark owner.
（2）、	Indemnify for any economy loss due to sale of infringement product
	Trademark owner can look for indemnity of any of their economy loss caused by selling of infringement product from the seller. However if the seller can prove they do not know the product they selling are infringement product, and show they get those products legally and show the supplier details, they are free to bear this responsibility.
（3）、	Recovery of any loss caused by any party (individual or legal entity) producing or selling infringement product.
（4）、	Any third parties providing service, including mailing, storage, transportation, hiding, etc for the infringer and seller and lead to loss to the trademark owner.
（5）、	Well-known Trademark
	In order to gain “well-known trademark” state, there are two ways to do this: either empowered by the relevant authority or gain by the court judgment. Once the “well-known trademark” state is empowered, it will automatically gain larger protections.

Criminal punishment

With criminal punishment for infringement can enhance the power for anti-infringement. According to the law, any party producing or selling infringement product repeatedly, they will receive criminal punishment. So please report the infringement to the related department in order to let the infringer receive the suitable punishment.

Legal advice (we can provide professional legal advice from lawyers)

Trademark also known as “logo” is part of company property. A trademark help companies to build up the brand and company image, this will bring to large economical benefit, so companies should spend attention on how to protect their trademark.

Recommendation

The following is a professional legal consultant advice for protecting trademark right

Investigate state

1.	Send researcher to the site that selling infringement products and get some evidence.
2.	Find a notary to go to the shop that selling infringement product and count the volume of the infringement products, and ask the notary to prepare the notary document in order to make this prove legal and useful in further legal action.
3.	Send those infringement products for laboratory test, keep the report for further legal uses.
4.	After the above, we have to review what evidence we got, and decide what further action will be more suitable.
	1)	With the help from professional business Investigation Company, find the producer of the infringement product.
	2)	Sending people to the producer to confirm their production line location
	3)	Report all evidence to the related department and let them take further action to stop the production
	4)	Review the evidence and cost to decide whether to take further legal action (such as prosecution).
5.	Investigation cost
	According to the law, infringer have to bear all economy loss for the trademark owner, investigation fee is also included.

General analysis for trademark protection

1.	Administration protection
	1)	Report infringement to related departments with any party selling or producing products infringed registered trademark. This is more suitable to case when the trademark owner does not have much evidence to prove their economy loss caused by infringement.
	2)	The related department can act as a middleman for the indemnification according to request. If the negotiation failed, the trademark owner can take further action.
2.	Prosecution (suitable when there are enough evidence to prove the economy loss)
	1)	Sue the seller of infringement product. In order to confirm all retailer know how to classify real and infringement product, the trademark owner should info them the detail about classifying in written form. In case the retailer does not take any responsibility, the owner can still find out the infringement product producer.
	2)	Sue both seller and producer
		If there is enough evidence, the trademark owner can sue both producer and retail seller.
	3)	Link up with administration punishment
		Report infringement to the related department and sue them at the same time. This can increase the effectiveness of the protection.
	4)	Minimum indemnify
		More and more countries understand the importance of intelligence property; so many countries had already imposed the minimum economy indemnity against infringement.
3.	When the action against infringement process to certain state, the owner can try to publish this news, this can help to promote trademark protection and also help to improve company image.

Important notes：Different methods against infringement have different uses. Prosecution is one of the best amount all, the cost is low, high effectiveness, the action can be take according to owner willingness and it is also flexible. However different case may have different methods that can fit the case, we strongly recommend you to seem for professional advice to protect your intelligence property as this has a great impact to the company image.

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