On January 4, 2016, Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd (hereinafter referred to Tencent as the applicant) applied for trademark "" registration (application No.18788691)  under the Class 38 with the service items of "television broadcasting, information transmission" . On October 5, 2016, The Trademark Office issued a notice of refusal, considering that the application trademark was similar to the trademark No. 7665873 " " (hereinafter referred to as the cited trademark), which had been registered in similar service items by Beijing leting Ledong culture media Co., Ltd.

We(STS) represented ”Tencent Technology“ to file the trademark review during the statutory period.

On May 12, 2017,The Trademark Review and Adjudication Board agreed our arguments and took back the objection. The Trademark " was granted for publication.

We mainly argued that these two trademarks coexist in the market did not cause confusion and misunderstanding of the relevant public, and could not be consided as the  similar marks.  Even though the English part “ Live Music” of these two trademarks are same, but both of them have the significant characters respectively, from the pronunciation and the outlook of the whole mark. Considering the constituent of trademark “” , the Chinese part “腾讯“ is the core mark of“TENCENT”, which is famous and enjoys the good reputation in China. So the consumer must associate the mark “”with the service provider TENCENT naturally, and would not confuse it with mark “”.

Therefore, the applied trademark and the cited trademark do not constitute an approximate trademark on the same or similar service as referred to in Article 30 of the Trademark Law of the People's Republic of China. In accordance with the provisions of Article 28 of the Trademark Law of the People's Republic of China, the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board decides that the application for trademark “”registration shall be initially examined and approved.

STS’s  OPINION 

To judge whether the trademark constitutes a similar trademark in the sense of trademark law, the general attention of the relevant public shall be taken as the standard, And the method of overall observation and comparison of the main parts shall be taken to judge whether the trademark logo itself is the same or similar. At the same time, factors such as the significance of the trademark itself, the popularity of the prior trademark, and whether the use of the same or similar trademark or service can easily make the relevant public confuse and misidentify the source of the goods or services should be considered comprehensively.