If you read Cosmetics Business: Do You Know Your Brand? I believe you have a comprehensive understanding of the problem of cosmetics brands. Brand is the cornerstone element of cosmetics management, but also one of the most valuable assets of cosmetics operators, how to better protect their own brand? Jiao Hanwei, lawyer of Shanghai Guohillhouse Law Firm, will discuss the issue of cosmetics brand protection from two perspectives of law and cosmetics business, for the reference of cosmetics operators.

Trademark registration is preferred.

The brand protection of cosmetics enterprises is the comprehensive protection of a series of brand elements of enterprises, including but not limited to trademarks, trade names, product names, product series names, unique ICONS, unique bottle shapes of products, unique flower boxes of products, unique tones of products, domain names, goodwill, etc. However, trademark is the most important element in the above brand components, and consumers usually first identify the producers, operators and service providers of the goods through trademarks. Compared with trade names, product names, designs, Copyrights and other intellectual property rights, trademark protection is particularly important and should be given priority. The key to the protection of cosmetics trademark is to register the trademark and obtain the exclusive right of the trademark. If the operator successfully registers the trademark, it has the exclusive right to a certain commercial sign, and can legally monopolize the use of a specific commercial sign. Without the permission of the trademark owner, no one shall use the trademark. In this way, the enterprise may only enjoy the traffic brought by the trademark, and only enjoy the commercial value of the precipitation after brand promotion. How can I obtain the exclusive right to use a trademark? Before the amendment of the Trademark Law in 2001, a strict registration system was applied, that is, only the successful registration in the trademark office could obtain the exclusive right of the trademark. After the amendment of the Trademark Law, our country has shifted to registration as the main, taking into account the principle of "use first". Although the amendment of the trademark law has conditionally stopped the rampant malicious registration phenomenon to some extent, not all trademarks can enjoy this treatment. Because trademark users need to spend a lot of energy to prove the "use first" and the trademark has a certain degree of fame and other requirements, and need to be recognized by the court. Therefore, cosmetics entrepreneurs to register trademarks is a priority for brand protection.

Reasonably determine the scope of trademark registration.

China's trademark law stipulates that the exclusive right to use a registered trademark is limited to the approved trademark and the approved goods, so each registered trademark has a specific right boundary. In the trademark registration priority at the same time, cosmetics operators should reasonably determine the scope of trademark registration. In order to meet the needs of trademark retrieval, registration, examination and management, China has combined some commodities with common attributes into a class, and divided all goods and services into 45 categories, forming the "classification of goods and services for trademark registration". Each category is divided into different groups according to specific criteria, and the next level of the group is the concept of goods and services, which currently contains more than 10,000 specific goods and services. This means that the applicant should reasonably determine the scope of the three concepts of class, group and item when registering a trademark, so as to truly achieve the purpose of trademark protection. How can cosmetics operators determine the scope of registered trademarks? On the one hand, cosmetics operators should consider their own business planning, and the categories and projects they may use to operate must be registered; On the other hand, cosmetics operators should also register categories and items that are not involved in their own business, but do not want other operators to use. Specifically, the cosmetics industry belongs to the big fashion industry in terms of scope, and there is a strong possibility of industry correlation and business malleability in the big fashion industry. The categories and projects of these products and services are required to be registered by cosmetics entrepreneurs. Such as the third category of cosmetics, the eighth category of cosmetic appliances, the sixteenth category of household paper, the eighteenth category of luggage, the fifteenth category of clothing, the forty-fourth category of beauty services. At the same time, although some goods or services cosmetics operators will not be involved, but also do not want other enterprises to use, these goods or services should also be registered, such as pesticide insecticides in the fifth category, metal coffin in the sixth category. In addition, large-scale enterprises can also consider full registration, because on the one hand, the cost of full registration is not high, on the other hand, the judgment of business extension in different stages of development of enterprises is constantly changing, and it is necessary to comprehensively prevent trademark risks under the premise of controllable costs. Trademark registration is simple, but trademark registration strategy is a very professional work, and in practice, many enterprises are mostly registered through non-professional trademark agencies, there is no strategy at all. Only through scientific analysis, lawyers can formulate reasonable trademark registration strategies and weave a tight protective net to effectively avoid others from free-riding to gain benefits. Registration and reasonable registration are two different concepts, cosmetics operators should pay special attention to this point.

Other commercial signs are protected.

In addition to trademarks, trade names, product names, product series names, unique ICONS, product originality bottle shapes, product originality flower boxes, product unique tones, domain names, goodwill and other elements have the function of distinguishing products. If there is no protection for the first time, there is the risk of being hitchhiked or copied by others, and the phenomenon of enterprise "crash" will inevitably occur in specific circumstances, causing consumer confusion. Among the above elements, the protection of trade name is another important commercial identification. Trade name is the name of the cosmetics operator, in the case of trade name and trademark inconsistency, and pay special attention to. The registration of enterprises in our country is a hierarchical registration system, and each administrative region independently approves the registration, so there will be the same situation in different administrative regions. This is precisely because of the regional approval status of the trade name system, some lawbreakers will register other people's unregistered business name as their own business name, free riding profit. The confusion of companies is very likely to cause consumers to misidentify and mispurchase, on the one hand, it will reduce the market share of cosmetics operators, on the other hand, in the rapid spread of the Internet, once the negative event of counterfeit products, it will bring great risks to the goodwill of cosmetics operators. In addition to the trade name, the appearance design of the original cosmetic bottle and flower box is an important identifying element of the product, and it is also an important selling point of the product, and the cosmetics operator should complete the copyright registration or design patent application at the first time. At this stage, the plagiarism of cosmetic design is very popular, and it is also the most troublesome problem for many large-scale cosmetics operators. Original products have not yet been listed, copycat goods have been blooming everywhere, greatly affecting the product listing. Through the above protection measures, it can effectively combat copycat products. Therefore, while completing trademark registration, it is necessary to actively protect other brand elements such as trade names to avoid being caught in all cases.

If the cosmetics operators have done the above brand protection trilogy, it means that the cosmetics operators have put a fence around their most important business assets, not only can exclusively use a specific commercial logo, exclusively enjoy the brand value of commercial promotion precipitation, but also can first crack down on the illegal behavior in the market. At the same time, only by doing the above brand protection work, cosmetics operators can achieve their own business purposes.