Every Chinese cross-border e-commerce seller should pay attention when registering a US trademark: not all trademarks meet the minimum registration standards. If they are similar trademarks, they will not be legally registered. This article will focus on: How do U.S. trademark registrations generally count similarity? I hope it can help Chinese sellers learn trademark knowledge.
1. Judgment criteria: trademarks are similar or similar.
For the US Trademark Office, it can be judged by the overall situation of the trademark: whether the trademark is similar. For example, the composed letters, pronunciation, and meaning of the text, as well as the translation of the text, etc., and also include the commercial impression conveyed by the entire trademark, etc. They usually base their judgment on these elements.
2. Judgment criteria: products and services are similar.
Except for the appearance of the trademarks, how do U.S. trademark registrations generally count similarities? The Trademark Office can also make judgments based on the similarity of product and service items. If U.S. products and services are in different categories, if they are highly similar, they will also be cross-similar. In other words, if applying for a trademark for a certain category of electronic products is similar to applying for category 35 electronic product retail services, the trademarks can be determined to be similar.
Similarly, if the production channels, retail channels, and derivative products of the products all involve similar categories, then they can be considered similar.
Because after a certain trademark applies for a cosmetics trademark in the United States, it may bring about superior branding and publicity effects. At this time, other merchants apply for this trademark and produce luggage products. This kind of behavior may be judged as “similar” because the examiner may judge that whether it is luggage products or cosmetic products, it will give customers a certain sense of connection.
In short, the above is a series of explanations on “How do U.S. trademark registrations generally count similarities and similarities?” If Chinese sellers want to optimize the process of applying for a U.S. trademark, they must first pay attention to: whether the trademark is similar or similar to a U.S. trademark; secondly, they must pay attention to: whether the products and services represented by this trademark are similar to other trademarks. Trademarks overlap.