"What? Even the brand may not be able to be protected? Just ask me to pay less money? Then I want lawyers like you to be of use!"

Deng Changchun claimed to be a "industrial believer" and always looked down on "virtual economy practitioners" who spoke out. Otherwise, he would not have offended Feng Jianxiong for no reason a few months ago.

So when he heard the professional advice given by Li Yifeng, he immediately felt very unhappy and felt that the lawyer he hired was really a coward.

He was a fisherman and thought the most glorious way to make money was to sell goods. So he was very indifferent to brand awareness. He didn't think it was a big deal to infringe other people's trademarks in his bones. My brother's things are of good quality, so what's wrong with using your brand? It's not about using inferior goods to fake it!

In recent years, with the rise of mob public opinion that "the real economy is glorious and the virtual economy is shameful", Deng Changchun, who was originally a little inferior, felt even more trembling in his heart, thinking every day, "College students are amazing, they are just working for me and being a dog for me."

Of course, if a fisherman is born to do this today, he still has wild intuition in business, otherwise he would not be able to become bigger. First of all, he was the village party secretary in their small fishing village, and he was quite good at bullying men and women forcing them to buy and sell forcing people.

In Wuyue Province, there are many village party secretaries who start with such township enterprises.

For example, in places like Longjing and Jingshan, there is a village party secretary who runs a tea stir-frying factory in a village. He has the ability to prevent foreign households from receiving local specialties and good tea. He lowered all the villagers' harvests, processed and fryed, and sold them. Over the years, he has a considerable family business.

For example, in the rural areas where the case is under investigation, each village has a branch secretary who runs a nut roasting factory. The specialty walnut bamboo shoots can be avoided from purchasing them. This is the same principle.

Specifically for Deng Changchun, his first-hand skill that he climbed up was to cheat the subsidy of diesel during the fishing moratorium, and to organize the fishing villages to do their best to catch fishermen who were lucky enough to catch fishing illegally, and to conceal the reports from his superiors, he still received the firewood to replenish them. Afterwards, the villagers who were not clean and did not dare to ask him for it, so he settled it and got the first pot of gold to start his business.

Even if such a person has achieved sales of over 100 million yuan per year, he still has the same thinking pattern as he did at the beginning.

Although Li Yifeng is not a great lawyer, he has experienced many experiences of being rushed to take on such pork ribs cases because he has no status in the institute, so he is very familiar with the virtues of small peasant entrepreneurs.

When Li Yifeng heard that Deng Changchun looked down on his efforts and ability, he felt really unhappy, and thought that he had no reason to say to such a farmer entrepreneur:

If such a person commits a crime and wants to hire a lawyer to get rid of the crime, he will probably have to be completely acquitted and he will be satisfied with paying for the money and thinks it is worth it. If the lawyer works hard and only gets a lighter sentence in the end, he is afraid he will not be happy.

At the moment, he also felt that there was not much oil and was too lazy to please customers anymore, and said neither humbly nor arrogantly:

"Mr. Deng, I hope you understand the reality. Your opponent has achieved very good results. In similar cases across the country, similar to those in the anti-counterfeiting industry have won a lot! Although in theory, your trademark is just a bit similar to those of L Godmother. In law, it is between confusion or not confusion. But in practice, the court is easily influenced by the idea of ​​previous cases, although our country is not a case law..."

What Li Yifeng said is definitely the truth.

Although China is not a case law country in the British and American legal system, no matter which country in the world, it is impossible for the judge to ask the clerk to type word by word every time when drafting such a stinky and long judgment document.

The common routine segment, you can think of it, is ctrlc+ctrlv.

Although Feng Jianxiong did the preliminary work before provoking this lawsuit, he had not yet made his godmother a "famous" throne, but he could already play a significant role in the anti-counterfeiting case.

I talked about it in detail for a long time, trying to make the client realize the seriousness of the problem.

Deng Changchun finally felt a little impatient, but knew that he could not force himself, so he showed up and said, "Then tell me, how should I deal with this case according to what you said?"

Li Yifeng quickly analyzed: "Is this case a real judgment? According to the current Trademark Law and relevant judicial interpretations, this is what happened:

First of all, although your trademarks also contain words like "godma" and the icons are very similar to the other party, they are not 100% the same after all.

Secondly, your trademarks were legal when they were registered. The other party had already registered "L godmother" in the 30th category of the "Nice Trademark Classification Table" earlier than you, but the 29th category had not had time to jointly register. However, you snatched the time difference before the other party's 30th category and the 29th category was released, and took advantage of your advantage of "existing evidence of actual use" at that time and maliciously snatched it.

Therefore, theoretically, if the other party is not famous, you cannot "cross-class protection" and squeeze out your "malicious registration" in other categories.

The problem now is that the other party is likely to be famous, and it depends on the situation. If the court compares the famous deal this time, according to the existing laws, you will "can only continue to use it within the scope of first use with evidence, but no longer expand the use" - my main focus now is to help you collect, improve the evidence link, prove the scope of your "actual use first" and let the court accept it."

The relevant provisions of the Trademark Law are not what many laymen think. It seems that after a trademark becomes famous, it can destroy all similar and confusing trademarks.

In fact, the law leaves a gap for "protecting first" to use.

For example, the domestic iPhone trademark case in 2009 is a typical example: Apple's iPhone trademark was recognized as a "famous trademark" in China in 2009, which means that it can domineeringly exterminate all confusing people across categories.

However, when the iPhone was just released on the other side of the ocean in 2007 and had not yet entered the Chinese market, a domestic leather goods company registered the "iphone" trademark under the 18th category "Leather Goods, Bags, Umbrellas".

Of course, Apple is an international giant that attaches great importance to intellectual property protection, and Qiao Laozi will not make the low-level mistake of "forgot to register an iPhone in some countries" trademark.

But the problem is that Apple did not make leather goods in the domestic business scope verification at that time, so even if it wanted to register the 18th category trademark of iPhone, it was not qualified.

Therefore, Apple has only achieved "registering the trademark 9th (electronics), 38th (telecommunications/communications), and 42th (Internet technology) trademarks in all countries around the world" (that is, what is allowed in Apple's business license business scope, try to debit it as much as possible)

Then, the leather goods company that had snatched the 18th category of iPhones sold "iphone brand leather mobile phone case" in China for several years.

Apple could only stare at me, until 2009 when iPhone 4 began to enter China. Because of its good sales, the iPhone trademark was successfully rated as a nationally well-known one.

After becoming famous, Apple made a free move to deal with this opponent. They filed a lawsuit in the court on the grounds that "iphone is a nationally famous trademark", demanding that "not only others cannot imitate iPhone brand mobile phones, electronic products, and Internet technology products", but also, "all brands with iPhone trademarks are not allowed to be imitated", and that those selling leather covers will be blocked.

However, the case ended in the second Intermediate People's Court of Beijing, with Apple losing the case.

The case is "When the other party started selling iPhone brand leather mobile phone cases in 2007, your iPhone trademark was not well-known at that time, so legally registered in 2007. The company selling the condom constituted a 'first use of it' and did not belong to 'fighting the popularity'."

What Apple finally got was just a right to "order the defendant not to continue to expand production, increase categories, and expand the market after the iPhone trademark has become famous."

In other words, after Apple sued the case, the registered leather goods factory just couldn't "formerly produced 100,000 units per month, but now it has increased to 200,000 units."

Or you can't "originally there was only one assembly line, but now you have additional investments to two assembly lines."

It is also impossible to "before the other party was famous, we only entered the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei market, and now we want to develop new dealers across the country."

We can't "originally only sold these few styles of mobile phone cases, but now we are planning to develop new styles and expand our business to iPhone brand wallets."

In a nutshell, it means that when the other party gets famous, any thing, range, output, style, or development that the other party must be frozen at the moment when the other party becomes famous.

Any new infringement after becoming famous will be severely cracked down.

The reason for this regulation is that the "R&D cost" of the trademark is very low, almost equal to zero - just slap your head, think of a beautiful and praising word, and then pay more than 1,000 yuan to register, and then you will get down.

This is completely different from copyright and patent - copyright and patent rights are mostly obtained by hard creative labor and invention and research.

But trademarks do have significant intangible value, so where do these values ​​come from? Anyone with discerning eyes can see that they are accumulated from the reputation and fame accumulated by the holder's daily operations.

In other words, whether a trademark is worth a lot or not has anything to do with whether it is beautiful in wording and sentence making or gorgeous in wording. "Chunlan" sounds better than "Gree", but the brand of "Gree" is more valuable than "Chunlan". That is because others do well in air conditioners, sell more, and advertise more, and have a combination of effects.

All this has led to international legislation on trademark protection, which attaches great importance to "protecting first and good faith use".

Later, in the case of iPhone, the defendant's leather goods factory could defend this way:

"You said I was taking advantage of your popularity. How do you prove it? In 2007, could the iPhone be legally bought in Mainland China? Can I advertise on domestic TV stations and get an invoice for advertising fees in China? Neither of these items is, and it is not "famous". Why do you say that the iPhone is famous in China?

"If I hadn't sold iPhone phone cases in China, maybe Chinese people wouldn't know the trademark of iPhone! What? Do you think I knew there was a brand called iPhone at the time? Of course I didn't know! I'm a leather bag seller! I don't care about the electronics industry. What is iPhone? I haven't heard of it at that time! So your Apple company should thank our leather bag company. After selling mobile phone cases for two years, they also helped you warm up the brand in China! It would be nice if you don't ask you to collect money!"

Even though Old Bid Qiao had ten thousand words to say in his mind at that time, he could not say anything about this kind of defense.

Because in law, if you don’t have sales (historically, the iPhone was officially launched in the country through the operator channel until the fourth generation. You could buy Hong Kong banks before, but you could only use it as a game console, because there is no such meid from domestic operators (network entry license)), if you want to prove that you are famous, you can only have the most excellent evidence of "famous trademark".
Chapter completed!