Table of Contents
The so-called Packaging brand self-protection refers to the legal protection measures implemented by the owner or legitimate user of the packaging brand to prevent illegal infringement and infringement from various aspects.
Packaging brand self-protection includes three parts: packaging brand self-protection, packaging brand management protection, and packaging brand legal protection.
The essence of packaging brand protection is to protect the intellectual property rights contained in the packaging brand, that is, to protect the trademark graphics, colors, material structure and design patents, commercial marketing secrets, domain names and other intellectual property rights of the packaging brand.
The primary task of packaging brand protection is to enhance the awareness and reputation of product packaging brands. The popularity of packaging brands is an important condition for maintaining their market competitiveness. Once a brand has gained popularity, some unscrupulous merchants will flock to counterfeit products in pursuit of profits, resulting in a large number of illegal packaging products that counterfeit branded packaging in the market.
Therefore, enterprises using legal systems to protect their packaging brands can avoid intentional counterfeiting and counterfeiting by illegal operators, and safeguard their legitimate rights and interests.
The reputation of a brand is the key to maintaining the vitality of a packaging brand, and its core is to improve the quality of the packaging brand. Developing and innovating technological achievements is the fundamental way to improve product quality.
Scientific and technological achievements must be protected by the Patent Law, otherwise, they will soon lose their market due to being counterfeited.
From this, it can be seen that the protection of intellectual property rights such as trademark rights, patent rights, trade secrets, and domain name rights is the core of packaging brand protection. Packaging brand protection is a key link in the operation of commodity marketing in a commercial society, and enterprises must attach great importance to it.
Packaging brand self-protection strategy
The so-called Packaging brand self-protection refers to the behavior of all owners and legitimate users of the brand actively implementing various protective measures to protect their own rights and interests.
Brand operators must strive to create high-visibility packaging brands in order to improve corporate efficiency and calmly face competition from all aspects.
However, the higher the brand awareness of packaging, the greater the threat of brand infringement, and the higher the likelihood of technological theft. The fierce competition between brands can lead some profit-driven speculators to take unfair measures, maliciously register legitimate users’ brands, or intentionally register trademarks that are the same or similar to well-known brands, seriously damaging the interests of brand operators.
Therefore, in order to promote the healthy growth of the brand, packaging brand operators must enhance their self-protection awareness and strengthen their protection of the packaging brand.
For example, in the food packaging design of the “Little Bites Muffins” brand, there is a “Top Taste” in the upper right corner“ ®” Mark, this is the mark of “registered trademark”, which means that the trademark has been registered with the National Trademark Office and has been approved by the Trademark Office, becoming a registered trademark.
The R in the circle is the starting letter of the English register registration. There is a “TM” mark in the upper right corner of the brand “Little Bites Muffins”. TM is an abbreviation for English trademark, which means that the words, graphics, or symbols marked with TM are trademarks, but may not have been registered (unregistered ones are not protected by law).
The self-protection of packaging brands involves all commercial activities and behaviors of brand owners and legitimate users, running through the entire business operation of enterprises.
Therefore, self-protection of packaging brands is not an independent act, it consists of a series of complex design activities such as packaging brand design, trademark registration, color design, material structure design, etc.
Enterprises with prominent commercial logos should design prominent trademarks. The distinctiveness of packaging brands, also known as distinctiveness or recognition, refers to the characteristics that can distinguish products from different manufacturers.
Packaging brand self-protection must possess this characteristic in order to receive legal protection, as brands lacking distinctiveness cannot be registered and protected as trademarks in countries around the world.
The Coca-Cola brand ranks first in the world, and in addition to its refreshing and personalized taste, stable quality, and high-intensity brand promotion strategy, it is also closely related to Coca-Cola’s simple, eye-catching, and catchy brand design.
Generally speaking, brand names can be divided into four categories based on their level of significance.
Transliterative brand names, such as “McDonald’s” and “Xerox”, are composed of transliteration vocabulary and have originality, making them significant in all goods and services.
Iconic brand names, such as Apple ‘, can play a distinguishing role as a brand marker for computers or clothing, but as a common name for such products, Apple lacks distinctiveness.
Implicit brand names, such as “Ivory” and “Microsoft”, are used on soap and computers. After people imagine, they associate certain characteristics of soap and computers and display the characteristics of soap and computers.
Descriptive brand names, such as “104” for computer keyboards and “Easy Call” for pagers, do not have significance due to a lack of imagination and directly describe the characteristics of the product or service.
Although descriptive brand names can reveal a specific feature of a product, they are not registered in many countries. In countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, the Trademark Law allows for the registration of descriptive brand names, but applicants must prove that their products do indeed have this characteristic.
In terms of the degree and scope of legal protection, transliteration packaging brand names have the strongest significance, followed by visual and suggestive brand names, and descriptive brand names have the worst significance.
According to the basic requirements for the distinctiveness of packaging brands, if one of the following situations occurs in the trademark registration application, the trademark acceptance authority shall not register.
Overly simple text or graphics. As a symbol of the origin of a product, a brand should have a certain content and form of expression in order to give people a visual impression, achieve the purpose of conveying information, and play a recognition role. Simple text and graphics are difficult to give a clear visual impression, so they cannot serve as identification and recognition.
Overly complex text, and graphics. A brand is an information symbol that conveys the origin of a product, and its text and graphics must be concise and eye-catching, with a prominent theme. The overly complex text and graphics are not easy to identify and address, making it difficult for many brands to leave a clear impression on consumers, and are easily confused with other text decorations on product packaging, so they do not have the recognition function of identification.
The various components of a brand cannot form a unified text, graphics, or a combination of text and graphics. As an identification mark, a brand should have integrity and be able to distinguish it from other words and decorations on the product. Therefore, as words and graphics of the same brand, their forms of expression should complement each other, and the content of expression should also complement each other.
Words or graphics commonly used in this product or industry. A brand is a mark that distinguishes the origin of a product, and its significance lies in its exclusive use.
Therefore, the text and graphics used as a brand should meet the requirements of exclusive and exclusive use.
Brands should not only be distinguished from general logos but also from commonly used words and graphics in the product or industry. The larger the proportion of commonly used words and graphics in the text and graphics that constitute a brand, the weaker it’s brand significance. If the prominent part of the brand is commonly used words and graphics, it does not possess brand significance.
In order to enhance the novelty of brand names, brand names with originality must be original, because originality is the foundation of uniqueness. Brand designs with strong uniqueness are easier to adapt to legal requirements than brands without uniqueness or with average uniqueness, and thus better protected by law.
For example, the “SONY” brand mentioned in the previous chapter has left a deep impression on people with its unique and ingenious design. SONY’s unique design not only quickly gained recognition and acceptance from consumers, but also effectively protect itself in case of infringement due to its “meaningless” uniqueness.
In brand design, in addition to considering the unique requirements of the brand, attention should also be paid to avoiding the use of text and graphics prohibited by relevant countries, avoiding industry terminology in the brand, and in addition, brand writing should also comply with standards.
There are corresponding provisions in trademark laws and regulations across countries regarding the prohibition of words and graphics for brands, and the basic principles are consistent. However, due to differences in cultural customs and economic development conditions in different countries, the legal provisions and review standards for prohibited words and graphics for brands vary.
Brand protection during the design process requires attention to the use of anti-counterfeiting technologies, such as laser holographic image anti-counterfeiting, fluorescent phosphorescence anti-counterfeiting, metal stealth anti-counterfeiting, and special sample printing anti-counterfeiting.
From a practical perspective, the low technological content of the brand and packaging provides convenience for counterfeiters to copy, which is an important reason for the damage to brand interests. In recent years, modern high-tech anti-counterfeiting has been widely applied in the market and has become one of the main means of protecting brands. Although these methods address the symptoms rather than the root cause, they still have a certain effect on protecting brand and consumer rights. The practice has proven that the reasonable use of anti-counterfeiting technology is an effective way to implement self-protection for packaging brands.
Packaging trademark registration self-protection
The most cohesive core of a packaging brand is the trademark. One important way to rely on legal protection for brands is through trademark registration.
Timely registration of trademarks
Timely trademark registration is the first step in brand protection. From the perspective of packaging brand protection, the importance of timely trademark registration is twofold.
Trademark registration is the main means of obtaining the exclusive right to use a trademark. Once a packaging trademark is successfully registered, others cannot register or use the same or similar packaging trademark as their own company on the same or similar product packaging, which can effectively prevent others from infringing on the legitimate rights and interests of their company’s packaging trademark. Otherwise, the packaging trademark will not receive legal protection and others can freely use it, which will impact the economic interests of the owner of the packaging trademark from counterfeit goods.
Registering packaging trademarks in a timely manner is the best way to prevent carefully cultivated packaging brands from being registered by others.
Once a packaging trademark is registered by others, it becomes the property of others. If the original trademark owner continues to use it, it is a form of infringement, ultimately leading to the situation where “the child raised by oneself becomes someone else’s child”. The higher the brand awareness of packaging, the greater the likelihood of the packaging trademark being registered.
Registering Trademarks Abroad
Registering trademarks abroad and obtaining protection from foreign laws is an essential means for Chinese enterprises to go global and create internationally famous brands.
Due to the lack of self-protection awareness among Chinese enterprises in the past few years, the phenomenon of some well-known brands being preemptively registered by others abroad is very serious, such as the phenomenon of “Qingdao” beer being preemptively registered in the United States, “Phoenix” brand bicycles, and “Zhuyeqing” liquor being preemptively registered in South Korea. The exclusive right to use packaging trademarks has regional and temporal characteristics.
Regionality refers to the protection of the exclusive right to use a registered trademark that is only valid in the country of registration; Timeliness refers to the fact that most countries adopt the principle of prior registration, where the first registrant enjoys the exclusive right to use the trademark.
To avoid trademark registration, enterprises should combine market strategy with brand strategy when formulating marketing strategies, and register in potential markets in advance based on the company’s market strategy layout, otherwise, it will cause incalculable losses.
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