论商标的指示性合理使用

在司法实践中,正品转售商经常会援引指示性合理使用以抗辩自己在店铺招牌上使用他人注册商标的行为不构成侵权。通过梳理目前国内的典型案例,可发现当转售商单独或突出性使用他人商标于其店招之上时,法院仍然会作出侵权判定,但不同的法院在涉案行为侵犯商品商标或服务商标,以及指示性合理使用的构成要件问题上存在分歧。进一步考察美国及欧盟的立法及司法实践,可以总结出指示性合理使用需要满足必要性、合理性、善意以及不构成相关公众混淆四个构成要件。在使用他人商标指示他人商品的来源的行为上,指示性合理使用与权利用尽的概念范围有重叠之处。指示性合理使用的主张以涉案行为构成商标性使用为前提,其作为一种构成商标侵权的例外,宜在涉案行为满足商标侵权的构成要件的基础上,作为侵权抗辩理由进行援引。无混淆可能性作为指示性合理使用的必然结果和内在要求,应成为指示性合理使用的构成要件之一。同时,若权利人的商标为其企业名称或其主要组成部分,转售商的使用还涉嫌构成擅自使用他人有一定影响的企业名称(字号)等不正当竞争行为。

On Nominative Fair Use of Trademark

In judicial practice,Genuine resellers often invoke nominative fair use to argue that their use of other people’s trademark on their shop sign does not constitute trademark infringement.By summarizing recent typical cases in China,it is found that when a reseller uses the other people’s trademark separately or prominently on his own shop sign,the court still finds him infringing.However,courts disagree in matters of whether the behavior involved infringes goods trademark or service trademark,nor they agree on the constitutive requirements of nominative fair use.Looking into the US and EU legislation and judicial practices,four constitutive requirements are needed to satisfy nominative fair use,namely,necessity,reasonableness,goodwill,and no likelihood of confusion by relevant public.With the behavior of using other people’s trademark to indicate the source of goods,the scope of the concepts of nominative fair use and exhaustion of rights overlap to a certain degree.The involved behavior constitutes trademark use is the prerequisite of the claim of nominative fair use,which,being an exception of trademark infringement,can be invoked as a defense of infringement when the involved behavior satisfies the requirements of trademark infringement.No likelihood of confusion,being both the natural result and inherent requirement of nominative fair use,should be made one of the constitutive requirements of nominative fair use.Meanwhile,if the right owner’s trademark is the name of his enterprise or the major component part of the name,the reseller’s behavior may also constitute unfair competition because he benefits from other people’s influential trade name.