Before we apply for an international trademark, in order to avoid the rejection or objection of the trademark application, we need to do a good job of trademark inquiry in advance to reduce our time costs and expense costs.

When Chinese enterprises go abroad, they must register trademark protection abroad to protect their brands. Many people are no longer unfamiliar with the application for registration of foreign trademarks, but many enterprises still do not understand, or even pay little attention to, the prior rights inquiry of foreign trademarks. Prior trademark inquiry means that the trademark applicant searches the registered trademark applications and registered trademarks in the destination country before submitting the application. Its purpose is to find out whether there is a conflict of trademark rights.

The trademark agency will analyze and issue a query report after receiving the query results from abroad. The query report will display the previous similar trademarks. Some domestic enterprises think that as long as they find an earlier similar trademark in a country, their trademark will not be successfully registered in that country, which is a very wrong idea. The purpose of trademark inquiry is to foresee and remove obstacles. The key is to carefully analyze the prior trademarks:

1. Trademark pattern

Taking the word trademark as an example, if the trademark of the domestic obligee is "JILY", the query finds several very similar trademarks, and the trademark application in the destination country is at great risk of rejection. At this time, the obligee can design the trademark graphically, or add a graphic to enhance the distinctiveness of the trademark. The so-called "prior similar trademark" will no longer constitute an obstacle.

In addition, if several prior trademarks starting with "JIL" are found in the query of the trademark "JILY", the obligee may not have to give up easily. Generally speaking, if multiple trademarks containing the same letter combination can coexist in the destination country, the possibility of coexistence of the queried trademark and these earlier trademarks will also increase. Of course, the possibility of the destination country's trademark office rejecting the trademark cannot be ruled out, because these coexisting prior trademarks may be finally registered through the reexamination defense.

2. The name of the trademark owner is also important information in the query report.

There are two situations to note:

First, if the searcher finds that the name of the owner of the earlier trademark is almost the same as the name of his own company, it may be that he has found his trademark that was successfully registered in the country before. At this time, it is necessary to immediately change the owner's name of the previously registered trademark in these countries, and then submit a new trademark application.

Second, if the previous trademark owner is the dealer or branch of the inquirer in the country, and the product category or even item is exactly the same, then it is likely that the trademark is preemptively registered. At this time, it is usually to apply for the cancellation of the earlier trademark, or communicate with the rush registrant to sign a trademark transfer agreement.

3. Providing accurate trade names will help the accuracy of trademark inquiry.

If no specific product name is provided, the agent company will query the entire category. Note that the query report of some countries will display the query results of other related categories. For example, the inquirer needs to query the "land vehicles" in category 12 of the International Classification, and the query report also shows the previous similar trademarks in category 37. At this time, we must not take it lightly, thinking that if the goods are not in the same category, they will not constitute an obstacle. Generally, if the country involves relevant categories in trademark inquiry, the Trademark Office will also review the relevant categories when reviewing the trademark application and issue a rejection.

On the other hand, if the appearance of the trademark, the category of goods, and the minor items of goods in the previous trademark information are similar to the content that the inquirer wants to apply for, and the country is an important market that the inquirer does not want to give up, then the conflicting goods can be deleted when submitting the trademark application. In this way, even if the application is rejected, it can be argued differently in the field of goods, Increase the possibility of overcoming rejection.

4. The application received the official acceptance notice can generally be queried. The date of registration and other information found does not mean that the registration is completed.

In some countries, only the earlier trademarks after the announcement can be found. Therefore, the inquirer often sees "trademark under review" and other marks in the status column of the previous trademark. At this time, although the earlier trademark application has not been completed, the earlier application date is enough to pose an obstacle to the trademark application of the searcher. For the first similar trademark in the application, the inquirer can first monitor the trademark. If the trademark is rejected halfway, the domestic obligee can immediately submit a trademark application to protect their rights as soon as possible. If the prior trademark is purely a rush registration, then trademark monitoring can enable the monitor to get the announcement date of the trademark as soon as possible, and raise an objection in a timely manner, clearing the obstacles for their trademark registration.

With regard to the expiration date of earlier trademarks, one problem needs attention: some countries' official databases are updated slowly, so the Trademark Office will cite invalid or abandoned trademarks to reject later trademark applications, such as the Philippines. Therefore, when inquiring about the prior trademark in such countries, even if it is found that the prior trademark is "invalid", you should be prepared to reject your application. Of course, it is very easy to overcome this kind of rejection, just explain it to the official.

It should be noted that the previous trademark query is not omnipotent. It has two dead corners:

First, the earlier trademark could not be found during the period from application submission to official acceptance and registration;

Second, from the time when the inquirer receives the inquiry report to the time when he/she submits his/her trademark application, new prior similar trademarks may appear.

Therefore, the inquirer should decide whether to submit the trademark application as soon as possible after receiving the inquiry report. In addition, since the trademark query is only a preventive screening of the previous similar trademarks, it does not check the registrability of the trademark itself, so this issue requires the inquirer to pay attention to when applying for trademarks, such as whether the trademark has significance.

Since the international trademark inquiry and registration is relatively professional, it is recommended to entrust it to a professional agency.