A trademark is a combination of words, graphics, letters, numbers, three-dimensional signs, color combinations and sounds or the above elements. The main purpose of using a trademark is to distinguish the source of goods or services. Therefore, trademarks are widely used by commodity producers or operators. On the one hand, they play a role in distinguishing goods or services; on the other hand, they play a role in promoting and promoting brands. However, the current Trademark Law of my country does not protect a dynamic process that appears on the Internet as a trademark.
E-commerce transactions are different from traditional face-to-face transactions. Customers cannot see real and intuitive goods. They can only rely on graphics, text and information to identify goods and services. Faced with a large amount of commodity information, trademarks with distinctive characteristics naturally become the darlings of e-commerce. Trademarks are very important in e-commerce. Once e-commerce leaves trademarks, it will become uncompetitive. From the perspective of trademark owners, customers can easily select high-quality goods or services on the online platform and determine their sources by identifying trademarks. Protecting trademark rights is conducive to maintaining the trademark rights obtained by trademark owners in accordance with the law, while avoiding the risk of customers purchasing counterfeit and shoddy goods and services. However, as a graphic symbol, trademarks can be easily copied or counterfeited through technical means on the Internet, which undoubtedly increases the difficulty of trademark protection.
Cross-border e-commerce involves an increasing number of trademark issues in cross-border commodity trading. On the one hand, export infringement; on the other hand, when cross-border e-commerce legally obtains genuine products from abroad and sells them in China again, trademark conflicts arise between the trademark licensee who has obtained the exclusive trademark license in China and the trademark exclusive right holder who has been approved for registration in China. Whether the exhaustion of trademark rights can be used as a defense has become a hot topic of discussion. The overseas purchasing model of cross-border e-commerce is “parallel import”, that is, the act of importing legally obtained “intellectual property” goods without the permission of the domestic intellectual property right holder. Due to differences in global pricing, some categories will inevitably conflict with the traditional domestic trademark right holders (licensees) or general agents. Domestic right holders will use intellectual property rights such as trademark rights to prevent imports without trademark authorization.
Parallel import refers to the act of a third party importing and selling goods using a registered trademark without the permission of the trademark owner or his authorized person in the importing country, when a trademark is protected by two or more countries in international trade, and the trademark rights in these two or more countries belong to the same trademark owner, or there is a licensing or control relationship between the trademark owners. The main reason for the parallel import problem is that there is a price difference between the same goods in the importing country and the exporting country, so the profit in the importing country can be higher than that of the same goods sold in the exporting country.