With the gradual awakening of enterprises' awareness of intellectual property rights, many enterprises will have the appeal of registered trademarks in the process of operation and development. However, before trademark registration, trademark inquiry has become an important part of the application process. What are the reasons for this? What specific operational methods do enterprises have for trademark registration inquiry?
1. Benefits of early trademark inquiry
The so-called trademark inquiry refers to the procedure that the trademark registration applicant inquires about the trademark registration in person or entrusts a trademark agent to find out whether the trademark he intends to apply for registration is the same or similar to the trademark already registered or being registered by others.
Generally speaking, the advantages of conducting trademark registration query in advance are mainly as follows:
(1) Identify barriers to trademark registration of enterprises and improve the probability of successful trademark registration. This is because enterprises can find out in time whether the trademark registration is the same or similar by inquiring about the trademark they want to register in advance. In such cases, enterprises can modify or adjust the trademark to be registered at the first time to make the trademark registration meet the application requirements.
(2) Help enterprises find out whether trademarks can be used safely. At present, registered trademarks need to comply with the relevant provisions of the Trademark Law. Therefore, by inquiring about trademark registration, enterprises can avoid the risk of infringement of others' registered trademarks, so as to ensure that registered trademarks are more safe and orderly.
(3) Help enterprises understand the progress of trademark registration applications. In fact, timely trademark inquiry can also keep abreast of the latest progress in trademark registration, so that the applicant can know well about trademark registration and trademark use. That is to say, although trademark inquiry does not have legal effect, enterprises still cannot ignore the importance of trademark registration inquiry.
2. Methods for trademark registration inquiry
(1) Through China Trademark Website (website: //sbj.cnipa.gov.cn/ ）Query. The businesses that can be queried include: trademark approximate query, trademark comprehensive query (query methods include: international classification number, application/registration number, trademark name, applicant name), trademark status query, trademark announcement query, error information feedback, and goods/services items.
(2) Go to the Trademark Office for inquiry. In this way of inquiry, the applicant needs to get the Trademark Inquiry Form at the inquiry window, fill it out correctly and submit it to the window for inquiry.
(3) Entrust an agent for inquiry. The registered trademark will be entrusted to a trademark agency for inquiry. Generally, enterprises only need to give the trademark name to the agency, and the agency company can professionally complete the relevant work of trademark inquiry.
