[Case Summary]

Hals is a company focusing on the research and development, design, production and sales of stainless steel vacuum insulation utensils for daily use. After more than 20 years of development, it has become one of the most influential professional stainless steel vacuum insulation utensils manufacturers in China. Its "Hals" trademark has been widely used and publicized, and has a high reputation and reputation.

After monitoring, the team found that a company in Yongkang City applied for the registration of the "Pirs PRERS" trademark on the 21st class "brush" and other goods, and the trademark was approved for registration in November 2021. After preliminary analysis, "Pirs PRERS" and Hals company's "Hals HAERS" trademark in the text composition and call, are relatively similar, used in brush and other 21 categories of goods items, which can easily lead to consumer confusion or misidentification of product sources; At the same time, the team found that the respondent's application for registration of the disputed trademark in this case had obvious subjective bad faith, which violated the principle of good faith. Hals then commissioned the team to file an invalidation application for the trademark. 

Comparison of trademarks:

[Result of Trial]

The case has now been concluded, the trademark Office after review that the disputed trademark and the cited trademark in the text composition, call, appearance and other aspects of similar, the disputed trademark designated to use the "brush; Thermos bottle "and other products and cited trademarks approved to use the" brush; The "cup" and other goods belong to the same or similar goods, and the trademarks of both parties exist on the above goods, which is easy to confuse and misidentify the source of the goods by consumers, and has constituted similar trademarks used on the same or similar goods. Therefore, the Trademark Office ruled that the disputed trademark should be declared invalid.

[Case Analysis]

In this case, there is a situation of malicious registration, and the respondent first acquired the Class 21 trademark "Pirs" from others, and then submitted a supplementary application for the disputed trademark "Pirs PRERS". In this case, the respondent obviously registered a trademark similar to the trademark registered by the applicant and had certain influence by improper means, while the original applicant of the trademark initially applied for the purpose of copying the well-known trademark, free-riding to sell it at a high price, and seeking illegitimate benefits.

For malicious registration, hoarding of trademarks, the relevant authorities should be severely crack down, rights and interests of the infringed enterprises and individuals in the discovery of malicious behavior, can entrust us to carry out regular monitoring, take invalid declaration application, opposition application and other procedures given by law, and actively safeguard their rights and interests.