In view of the current various illegal agents on the market, endless acts, as a trademark agent practitioners, I suggest the applicant from the following 4 aspects, to prevent agent trap.
How to guard against these risks?
First, first by the State Administration of trademark Industrial and Commercial Bureau official website of the relevant agency qualification, choose reliable from providing agency services for themselves, in principle, try to choose the agency for a long time, the establishment of a good reputation. In addition, agencies in Beijing may be given priority because they are geographically convenient to communicate with and communicate with the trademark office. Or select local agencies, once disputes arise, but also conducive to timely solution.
Second, to apply for registration of trademarks, in the industry division of a certain understanding. When an applicant applies for a registered trademark, he or she should know exactly which category of goods or services he belongs to and decide on the relevant categories according to the future development plan. This will prevent some trademark agencies from encouraging applicants to carry out unnecessary full class registration in order to charge more.
Third, master the procedure of trademark registration, pay attention to the dynamic of registration application, and avoid the commitment of trusting agency. The trademark office applies the registered trademark for examination according to the time of application, and there is no "jumping the queue", so as to avoid the belief that the agency is looking for an acquaintance and speeding up the examination. Generally speaking, in a complete application for trademark registration process, from submission to received notice of acceptance of the application time should be in 3~4 months, if the agency earlier than 3 months to get the acceptance notice or not later than 4 months to get the acceptance notice, are likely to have problems, then the applicant should query China trademark to keep abreast of the situation.
Fourth, correctly treat trademark rejection and trademark objections. In the face of the fact that the trademark has not been examined, the applicant should correctly treat his attitude and decide whether or not to reject the review on the basis of comprehensive consideration. When some agencies claim that the review is out of date, the applicant cannot be trusted.
Characteristics of trademark agency
The speciality and particularity of trademark agency
Trademark agency, as an important component of the legal intermediary service of intellectual property law, has a strong professional and technical nature.
First of all, trademark rights are not produced naturally according to law. They can only be applied through the special procedures prescribed by law. It is the main and substantial content of the trademark agency work that the agent applies for trademark registration. Trademark right legal procedure is very complex, including the trademark application for registration, transfer of registration, renewal of registration, change of registration, licensing contracts, dissent and review matters, a long time, many links, strong continuity. Trademark agents need to be very familiar with the procedures for trademark registration.
Secondly, a considerable number of trademark agency business is illegal, legal professional affairs. Trademark agents need to accurately grasp the classification of goods and services, and thoroughly grasp the trademark examination standards. Only with the classification of goods as an example, according to the international classification of goods and services with "nice agreement" registered trademark, a total of 42 categories, involving tens of thousands of kinds of commodities, China will be divided into 485 similar groups, the content system is complicated, trivial, and also the changing of commodity categories and similar groups judgment, expertise and long-term practical experience is needed to accurately grasp and discrimination. And because of the lack of knowledge of trademark knowledge, it is very difficult for the company to accomplish the above tasks on its own. The organization to participate in the national examination after the qualification of the agents can obtain the trademark trademark law by virtue of its rich professional knowledge, high quality and high efficiency for trademark matters for the enterprise, help the enterprise to maintain enterprise registered trademark, trademark rights, but also contribute to the trademark administrative organs to improve work efficiency, play bridge and link between enterprises and the role of the State Trademark authority. With the further development of China's socialist market economy and Chinese trade with foreign exchange activities more and more widely, brand in the production and sale of enterprises is becoming more and more obvious, trademark agent plays an increasingly important role.