In the past two years, disputes over the protection of the rights of geographical indication trademarks such as "Tongguan roujiamo" have emerged continuously, causing widespread concern. Nanjing Qinhuai District People's court recently concluded such a lawsuit filed by Jingdezhen Ceramic Association as a plaintiff, and finally rejected all the claims of the association.

Supermarket porcelain bowl bottom (left) and the trademark registered by Jingdezhen Ceramic Association

Huang Qian, the judge in charge of the case and vice president of the intellectual property court of the court, said, "geographical indication trademarks actually include the public resource of" geographical indication "into the protection scope of trademark exclusive right. Therefore, the scope of exclusive right and prohibition right cannot be extended to the legitimate use of others."

There was a "Jingdezhen system" at the bottom of the bowl, and the supermarket was sued for 50000 yuan

Zhang opened a department store in Qinhuai District, Nanjing. In June 2021, Jingdezhen Ceramic Association purchased two ceramic bowls in Zhang's supermarket and notarized and obtained evidence at the same time.

It can be seen that the bottom of these two ceramic bowls has the style of "made in Jingdezhen".

Jingdezhen Ceramic Association believes that Zhang uses signs similar to his registered trademark on the products he sells without legal authorization, and uses similar trademarks on the same goods, which is easy to lead to confusion and misunderstanding of consumers and constitute trademark infringement.

The association said that they approved the registration in July 1999 and obtained the relevant trademarks. The term of validity of the trademark registration is from July 28, 1999 to July 27, 2009. After renewal, the term of validity is extended to July 27, 2029.

Jingdezhen Ceramic Association sued Zhang to Qinhuai court, asking him to stop the infringement and compensate the plaintiff for all losses of 50000 yuan.

The court ruled that it did not constitute trademark infringement and rejected the application of Jingdezhen Ceramic Association

Huang Qian, the judge in charge of the case and vice president of the intellectual property division of Qinhuai court, introduced that in this case, the label of the alleged infringing ceramic bowl was marked with not only the commodity name information, but also the factory name and address, contact information, bar code and certificate identification.

Through this information, it can be determined that the manufacturer of the alleged infringing goods is indeed located in Jingdezhen Ceramic Industrial Park, Jiangxi Province, that is, within the specific geographical scope corresponding to the geographical indications claimed by the plaintiff.

However, except for the words "made in Jingdezhen", the bottom of the porcelain bowl did not use other marks that were the same or similar to the registered trademark of Jingdezhen Ceramic Association. The court held that such marks would neither detract from the popularity and influence carried by the geographical name in the plaintiff's registered trademark, nor mislead the public. Therefore, Zhang's sales behavior does not constitute trademark infringement.

Finally, the Qinhuai court rejected all the claims of the plaintiff Jingdezhen Ceramic Association.

Under what circumstances can place names in geographical indications be used?

Last December, "Tongguan roujiamo" geographical indication rights protection incident received high attention from the society. The cause of the incident is that Tongguan rougamo Association, registered with Tongguan County Civil Affairs Bureau of Weinan City, Shaanxi Province in 2016, has initiated a large number of trademark infringement lawsuits as a plaintiff in recent years, involving nearly 20 provinces and cities such as Henan and Zhejiang. Then, under what circumstances can the geographical names contained in geographical indication trademarks be used properly?

"Geographical indication trademarks actually include the public resource of" geographical indication "into the protection scope of trademark exclusive right. Therefore, the scope of exclusive right and prohibition right cannot be extended to the legitimate use of others." Huang Qian said that if the alleged infringing goods or services do come from a specific area of geographical indications, have specific quality, and do not use the unique patterns in geographical indications, which will not lead to the relevant public's misunderstanding of the origin and other specific quality of the goods, they should be recognized as the legitimate use of the specific place names, which does not constitute an infringement of the exclusive right to use registered trademarks.

It is not allowed to use geographical indication trademarks to collect franchise fees

After the extensive discussion on the protection of the rights of geographical indications of "Tongguan roujiamo", the person in charge of the third people's Court of the Supreme People's court answered the questions related to the judicial protection of geographical indications, saying that there was no legal basis for using the collective trademark of geographical indications to obtain franchise fees.

With regard to the litigation phenomenon of "touching porcelain" involving geographical indications, the person in charge said that the people's court can impose a fine and detention on the party who brings a malicious lawsuit according to the seriousness of the circumstances. If a crime is constituted, criminal responsibility shall be investigated according to law.

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