Recently, the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board announced the Trademark Review and Adjudication [2012] no. 28394 “Trademark Opposition Review Adjudication on the No. 2584025 ‘Bank-Insurance Link’ Trademark”, the request for opposition review adjudication by Agricultural Bank of China, represented by our firm, was supported by the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board.

With the disadvantage of the Trademark Office’s lack of support in Agricultural Bank of China’s reasons for opposition, the agents of our company, adopting a highly professional, dedicated and responsible attitude, thoroughly studied and analyzed the case. After completing the collection of evidence, penning documents and finishing other commissioned tasks for the case, the agents discussed in details that, “Bank-Insurance Link” was the name for the one-stop service, provided by banking and insurance industries, which offered the purchase, underwriting and dating of insurances through technology platform for clients. The name directly communicated the means of realization for the mentioned service and its characteristics. Its designation as a trademark on the “insurance, insurance information, banking, financial services, credit services, electronic transfer, jewelry appraisal, real estate agency, general agency, charity fundraising, trusts and pawnbroking” services lacks originality, and thereby violated the article 11, paragraph 1, item 2 of the Trademark Law.

After investigation and the collegial panel’s discussion, our request for opposition review was eventually proved by the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board. The Board held that the submitted evidence we provided could prove that “Bank-Insurance Link” referred to a kind of application system used between banks and insurance companies for instant online trading. The opposed trademark, designated to be used on services including banking and insurance, would be easily understood as a description for specific services, their content, or the related technological features. Its use as a trademark for the mentioned services lacked distinctiveness and constituted the situation described in article 11, paragraph 1, item 2 of the Trademark Law. 

The case was an important model example. The regulation in article 11, paragraph 1, item 2 of the Trademark Law states that, trademarks that only express directly the qualities, main components, functions, uses, weights, numbers and other features of products cannot be registered. It is rare to see a trademark opposition based on this regulation in the Trademark Law in trademark adjudication cases, and rarer to obtain the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board’s support. The success of this case was anther model example of our company’s representations in complex and difficult cases. Also, in this case, the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board clarified the differences between and the standards of the common names in article 11, paragraph 1, item 1 of the Trademark Law, and article 11, paragraph 1, item 2 of the Trademark Law, in terms of application. This provided positive guideline for the trials of similar cases in the future.