The Trademark Law of our country stipulates that trademarks with adverse effects shall not be used as trademarks and shall not be registered in order to promote good social morality and maintain social stability.
In judicial practice, when judging whether the trademark application has adverse effects, we should consider whether the logo or its constituent elements may have negative and negative effects on China's political, economic, cultural, religious, ethnic and other social interests and public order. For the applied trademarks such as "Kill them", the constituent elements of the trademark are all composed of derogatory terms, and its external expression obviously has the intention of discriminating, insulting personality and even personal attacks, which violates public order and good customs and presents negative meanings to the relevant public, so it is obviously a trademark with adverse effects.
However, in some cases, although the elements of a trademark seem to have derogatory meanings, it can be clearly proved that it expresses goodwill and does not make the relevant public intuitively feel that it has obvious bad intentions. It is not appropriate to identify a trademark with bad influence just because it contains derogatory terms. The following case illustrates this point.
Renhuai city Dardaren Industrial Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Dardaren Company) applied for registration of the trademark of "stealing a glass of wine" on the 33rd category of yellow rice wine, shochu, alcoholic beverages (except beer), sake, wine and other commodities. The Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce and the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board (hereinafter referred to as the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board) successively rejected Dardaren's application for registration on the grounds that the word "stealing cups" in the applied trademark was indecent, especially.
In the administrative lawsuit filed with the people's court, Dalda Company claimed that "stealing cups" in the trademark application has a specific meaning, which refers to a marriage custom in Guizhou, with a good meaning and no adverse effects. Moreover, after a lot of publicity and use, the trademark application has been well known to the relevant public, and it has formed a one-to-one correspondence with Dalda Company, which can completely distinguish the source of goods, so it is requested to cancel the decision to reject the reexamination.
When the court tried the case, according to the clues in the file evidence, it logged on the website to consult a large number of materials reflecting the customs and habits of ethnic minorities, and found that there was a custom of "stealing cups" when holding large-scale celebrations and weddings in many provinces, cities and ethnic minority areas in China, especially in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, where "stealing cups" was a folk custom handed down from generation to generation by the local Bama Yao people.
Accordingly, the court held that when judging whether the trademark involved has adverse effects, we should consider whether the logo or its constituent elements may have negative and negative effects on China's political, economic, cultural, religious, ethnic and other social interests and public order. In this case, the trademark application consists of the Chinese character "stealing a glass of wine". Although the word "stealing" is often understood as a derogatory term, it does not mean that all signs containing the word "stealing" will have a negative and negative impact on social interests and public order. Many times, the word "stealing" is also a neutral word, such as "stealing music" and "secretly watching her". The word "stealing cups" used in trademark applications has not made the relevant public feel clearly and intuitively that it is directly expressing the meaning of "stealing". The most important thing is that "stealing cups" is a traditional wedding custom of some ethnic minorities in China, which has a good meaning. If it can be registered, from the perspective of enhancing social effects, it is also the inheritance and continuation of traditional customs in China's long history, so it is not appropriate to apply for a trademark. On this basis, the court decided to cancel the decision to dismiss the retrial and asked the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board to make a new decision.