Moreover, the “Old Red Book” was rejected this time not because the “Old Red Book” was too unreasonable, but because someone filed an application for the “Red Book” trademark the day before, resulting in similar trademarks. The company is currently initiating a review.
For this “Old Red Book” trademark, I can’t smile when I smile. Behind it is the cruel trademark war, which reveals the hardship of market competition and the madness of the company’s legal affairs working overtime to catch up with materials. Indeed, it has almost become a daily task for serious enterprises to preemptively register various exotic trademarks as “defensive trademarks”.
The authentic “Big White Rabbit” toffee manufacturer has registered more than a dozen similar trademarks: Big Grey Rabbit, Big Black Rabbit, Big Flower Rabbit, Little White Rabbit, Golden Rabbit, Silver Rabbit, etc. andMilletCompany, putRed riceThe trademarks of, blue rice, black rice, purple rice, orange rice, green rice, yellow rice and orange rice are all registered. Even the Coca-Cola Company, which owns the original “Sprite” trademark, has also registered the copycat trademark “Lei Bi”. Xiaomi registered all the “Mi” in several colors in order to prevent others from preemptively registering and occupying the pit, but these “defensive trademarks” are generally not used actively.
The general principle of the “Trademark Law” is “register first”, whoever registers a trademark first, and who is protected by law. From the perspective of rights protection, once a trademark has been “registered first” by other companies, and then rights protection is required, the burden of proof and litigation costs for rights protection will be very high. The main reason is that you need to prove that you are “known to the public” with a high reputation and significant Only a strong trademark can be revoked. As a result, the burden of proof is very high and the cost of safeguarding rights is high, causing many companies to have to “defensively” take the pit.
Do not believe? Look at the market. In addition to the serious “six walnuts”, “seven walnuts”, “eight walnuts”, “600 million walnuts”, “six walnuts” and “big walnuts” are all rampant. However, from the perspective of trademark law, it is really difficult to defend the rights of the “six walnuts”. These “N walnuts” may have already been registered. And long.
In fact, trademark squatting has become a stubborn product nowadays, and a little bit of well-known names, things, and hot words may be squat-registered. During the Tokyo Olympics this year, Yang Qian, Chen Meng, Quan Hongchan and other Olympic athletes who achieved good results were applied for trademark squatting. For this reason, the Chinese Olympic Committee issued a statement condemning squatting.
Therefore, there is no need to make a fuss about Xiaohongshu’s registration of “Old Red Book”. On the contrary, Xiaohongshu was “late to start”, so that some people first applied for the trademark of “Old Red Book” in other categories, and this time The rejection was also because someone registered the “红书” similar trademark earlier.
Not long ago, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the “Guidelines for Building a Powerful Country with Intellectual Property Rights (2021-2035)”. The establishment of a strong country with intellectual property rights requires the participation of all people. Commercial IP. From this perspective, the better the protection of intellectual property rights, the more nonsensical “defensive trademarks” will be. On the contrary, there will be no place for “Kangshuaibo” and “Yueliyue” on the market.
