E-commerce enterprises fight for trademarks (double eleven trademark war)

This year? Double eleven? Alibaba Group's total online shopping is 57 1 100 million, and its impressive performance is still in sight. Double twelve? The online shopping feast is sudden. Compared with previous years, this year? Double eleven? There is a big difference in the e-commerce shopping carnival, that is, major e-commerce companies skillfully use advertisements for trademark wars, and from? Double eleven? Go on? Double twelve? . Because Alibaba group put? Double eleven? 、? Double twelve? All have registered trademarks, which are called defensive registration in the industry, that is, forward-looking registered trademarks for brands that they are using or may use and objects that may be confused. In fact, Alibaba Group registered its trademark defensively three years ago. Last year? Double eleven? I got the trademark registration certificate and took it out unexpectedly this year, which attracted the attention and emergency of other e-commerce. It should be said that Alibaba's legal team is very powerful, because it is not easy to see problems and risks, but it is more difficult to listen and take action. Although it seems that the price of a single trademark registration is not expensive, it still takes a lot of time, energy and money to apply for registration in large quantities and with full coverage. I have heard feedback from business representatives after lectures or speeches many times, saying that we also agree with what you said, but unfortunately, the report I wrote was not recognized by the leaders, and I didn't get the funds, so I didn't have enough spare capacity. Moreover, this kind of work often happens because there are 999 registered trademarks of commodity categories, and any one that is not registered will have an accident and be easily criticized. After Alibaba took out the trademark registration certificate, what about other e-commerce? Double eleven? Advertisements have to be changed urgently to avoid obvious infringement. At the same time, they did not forget to tease Alibaba in the advertisement. Double eleven, you have one and only one choice? And the other party said,? Double eleven, should there be one more choice? Said,? Ordering doesn't compare prices, because I am the biggest? And the other party said,? Don't force the price down, you are the richest man in ya), and at the same time, you also played a registered online game festival trademark suspected of infringement? Open * * * to enjoy? The public relations banner of the Internet spirit, the advertising, public relations and public opinion wars caused by the registration and application of trademarks by e-commerce tycoons, are interesting and interesting. But the effect of these means actually depends on the basic arrangement of all parties, that is, the defensive registration of trademarks. Defensive registration can provide legal protection for the company's new project expansion site. In traditional culture, auspicious words suitable for opening shops and making signboards have been compiled into a formula, which is about dozens of words. Traditional shop tricks are generally composed of these auspicious Chinese characters. Now, although everyone no longer sticks to these traditional auspicious words, who doesn't want to be auspicious when building a brand, but who wants to be loud? Therefore, good brand vocabulary is still a limited resource. What's more, building brand awareness and reputation is by no means an overnight success. When Google entered, it hoped to build a China brand. After considering many alternative words, it finally decided to use the present. Google? . When it was first announced, it also triggered protests from many loyal Google users. Defensive registration can prevent competitors and professional investors from malicious cybersquatting. In 20 13 years, the number of trademark applications in China was188150,000, and the cumulative number of trademark applications exceeded140,000. It has indeed become a disaster for professional investors to make huge profits by using malicious registered trademarks. Because enterprises are usually reluctant to publicly buy the price of trademarks, so as not to encourage malicious speculation and preemption, the price of buying trademarks is generally confidential. Some trademarks are not negotiable because the cybersquatters are too bold to compromise. There are also some trademarks that other enterprises have already registered in their normal operations, so they will not be registered first. Later, enterprises wanted to register such brands and could only negotiate to buy trademarks that others had legally registered. Otherwise, you may face serious legal risks for violating the trademark law. A typical case in this regard is the IPad trademark dispute I analyzed in this column. Apple did not think of this layer, but entrusted the trademark to a large multinational legal service agency. Unexpectedly, there was a little mistake in the actual operation, but in the end, Apple paid a commercial price of $60 million for this small mistake. Previously, Apple bought the iphone trademark from enterprises through normal negotiations, but it only cost several million dollars. It can be seen that the cost of professional services may be very expensive, but compared with possible business risks, it will always be a decimal. Have you noticed that foreign companies in China attach the most importance to all kinds of professional services? The intuitive result is that there are very few cases in which foreign companies lose intellectual property rights, and the success rate of foreign companies in existing intellectual property cases is as high as 90%! Defensive registration is also conducive to changing brand positioning and enhancing image. For example, from Lexus to Lexus, Toyota has established a brand-new luxury car brand. Lenovo's brand association has changed from a regional enterprise to a global multinational company, but the effect is the same. Defensive registration can also clear obstacles for major initiatives in capital markets such as listing. Didi taxi has robbed the limelight in the past two years, but it can only be changed to? Didi taxi? This renamed Didi sounds exactly the same as the original Didi. Whether legal risks can be avoided depends on the wits and wits of both lawyers. Momo, a domestic mobile social application, encountered the legal risk of trademark infringement when submitting an IPO application to the SEC, because Momo, like most enterprises, thought that the simplest and safest way was to learn about the categories and specific products required for trademark registration from peers. I didn't expect that the latest version of the 20 14 product classification table added online social network categories, and WeChat corrected it in time, and Momo ignored it. Momo unfortunately fell into the trap mentioned above: it's okay to register a large number of trademarks, and just dropped a new category, it was squatted.