With such a high rejection rate of artificial trademarks, how can we avoid risks？

With the popularity of artificial intelligence, the number of applications for artificial intelligence has exploded. In 2017, China’s trademark examination authorities accepted 12,857 applications for artificial intelligence trademarks. In December 2018, a total of 6,396 cases were accepted, of which 1,067 were declared invalid; From January to May 2019, 6432 cases were accepted, of which 590 cases were declared invalid. From January to May 2020, 6347 cases were accepted, of which 594 cases were declared invalid. From the data of various types of trademark applications, except for a few categories such as computers and mobile phones, the rest are the results of the cancellation of registration after the application trademark is declared revoked or invalidated, especially the computer category accounts for almost all trademark applications.

What is the reason for the high rejection rate of artificial trademarks? At present, artificial intelligence technology has been applied in trademark rejection review, trademark objection review and other fields. However, there are still some limitations at present because there are various types of trademarks that can be applied for, unlike other types that involve complex legal relationships and relatively concentrated subjects of trademarks. Now, although artificial intelligence has the ability to automatically classify and screen a large number of application types, its application scope needs to be further expanded and improved because it is only tested and verified in specific types (such as financial services, computer programs, advertising services, etc.). Moreover, in the future, the field of application for artificial intelligence will continue to expand, posing more new problems and challenges to trademarks, which will also affect the examination results of trademark registration by the Trademark Office.

So how can we avoid risks? First of all, enterprises should make sure that trademarks are not similar, and they can make approximate inquiries about trademarks through official channels or professional trademark data inquiry platforms. At the same time, one’s own trademarks should have distinctive corporate characteristics. When designing trademarks, one can use some special fonts, which is not only convenient for consumers to remember, but also reduces the similarity with other trademarks in the audit process. Secondly, combined trademarks can be registered separately. When a trademark is examined, it is easy to reject the whole trademark because of the similarity of one element of a combined trademark. Therefore, the words, English, patterns, colors and other elements can be registered as trademarks separately first, and the passing rate of artificial intelligence trademark examination can be passed.