Here is one of our successful cases of trademark reexamination, for your reference.

As there are up to 25 million valid trademarks and nearly 8 million new applications every year in China, and, in addition, both China National Intellectual Property Administration and the courts will no longer wait for the results of the cancelation of the cited trademarks when hearing the relevant trademark application cases, we suggest to retrieve the trademarks when applying for them, and at the same time, file the application for the cancelation of the prior trademarks that have the possibility of being canceled.

Reexamination strategy and reason

When applying for the trademark “” in class 18 for the client, Foridom retrieved the cited trademark, and believed that the cited trademark would be an obstacle and our application would be refused.

Through analysis, we believed that the holder of the cited trademark is a natural person instead of a commercial subject (the application date of the registration of the cited trademark is December 18, 2006), and it is unlikely that the cited trademark was used.

After research, we found that the holder of the cited trademark had registered three trademarks (including the cited trademark), one of which had been cancelled in 2017.

At the same time, through the Internet and other means of investigation, we did not find any evidence of the use of the cited trademark.

In conclusion, we believed that there was a great possibility to cancel the cited trademark, so when we filed the application for the applied-for trademark, we suggested the client to file an application for the cancelation of the cited trademark in accordance with article 49 of the Trademark Law.（“Where a registered trademark has not been put in use for three consecutive years without a justifiable reason, any entity or individual may apply to the trademark office for revocation of the registered trademark.”）

The applied-for trademark was refused due to the existence of the cited trademark. However，in the procedure of review of the registration refusal, we cancelled the cited trademark.Therefore, the client successfully registered the trademark.

Decision

Preliminary Approval

(S.P. Zi [2019] No. 317721)