1、 Unregistered well-known trademark.

In China, there is no shortage of well-known trademarks, although they are well-known both at home and abroad, but because everyone's legal awareness of trademarks is not strong enough, there has always been no registered trademarks. In order to protect these unregistered well-known trademarks, China's laws stipulate that applicants should distinguish from unregistered well-known trademarks when applying for trademark registration to avoid confusion. The same or similar trademarks with well-known trademarks are not allowed to be registered.

2、 Unregistered trademark with certain influence.

For such influential unregistered trademarks, there will be malicious rush registration. The relevant laws are as follows:

1. Once the applicant of malicious rush registration meets the constitutive requirements of malicious rush registration, the applicant of malicious rush registration will therefore bear the liability for tort compensation.

2. The prior use of a trademark is an act of continuously using a trademark in good faith before the trademark registration. The applicant for trademark registration is based on the starting point of good faith, which is different from the act of malicious preemptive registration.

3、 Are unregistered trademarks protected by law

Article 3 of the Trademark Law stipulates that a trademark approved and registered by the State Trademark Office is a registered trademark, and the trademark registrant has the exclusive right to use the trademark and is protected by law. From this, we can see that the focus of the trademark legal system in China is to protect registered trademarks, and unregistered trademarks are not easily protected by trademark law. Of course, the Trademark Law also stipulates the protection of used but unregistered trademarks.

For example, Article 13 of the Trademark Law stipulates that if a trademark applied for registration for the same or similar goods is a well-known trademark that is not registered in China and is copied, imitated or translated by others, which is likely to cause confusion, it shall not be registered and its use shall be prohibited; Article 31 of the Trademark Law also stipulates that the application for trademark registration shall not damage the existing prior rights of others, nor shall it preemptively register the trademarks that have been used by others and have certain influence by improper means. These are provisions for the protection of unregistered trademarks.

Unregistered trademarks are not easily protected by law, nor does it mean that unregistered trademarks can be used at will without being bound by trademark laws and regulations. For example, the prohibition of use as a trademark mentioned in Article 10 of the Trademark Law should also be observed in the use of unregistered trademarks.

Because unregistered trademarks are not easily protected by law, users of unregistered trademarks are always in an unstable and incomplete state with no guarantee of rights, and their trademarks may be complained by others at any time because they are the same or similar to the trademarks used by others on the same or similar goods. As the disadvantages of using unregistered trademarks outweigh the advantages, enterprises are encouraged not to use unregistered trademarks as much as possible.

Although it is often said that a trademark is an intangible asset of the obligee, it generally refers to a registered trademark. For unregistered trademarks, that is, ordinary trademarks, this is not protected by law, so it may not bring more economic benefits to the obligee, and there may also be the possibility of infringement.