Briefing of the Case

Christian·Lacroix Company (hereinafter referred to as “the applicant”) has applied for the registration of the trademark “CHRISTIAN LACROIX”(hereinafter referred to as “the applied trademark”) under Reg. No. 31481764 on the goods “non-metal pallet” under class 20 in China, after the review, the State Intellectual Property Office held that the mark served as a trademark on the designated goods was likely to pose bad social influence, thus, to refuse the application for the registration of the trademark. Christian·Lacroix Company refused to accept it and filed the application for refusion of the review. Grounds for review were as follows: 1. “CHRISTAIN” is a common English name, also the name of the founder of the company’s brand and the brand with the same name, belonging to the situation with “other meaning”. The applied trademark has enjoyed a certain reputation in Chinese consumers by the publicity and usage in domestic and overseas for long time. Consumers will not regard it as “Christian” and then to cause bad influence. 2. The applicant has already registered the same trademark or trademarks including “CHRISTIAN” on goods and services under many classes, this means that the State Intellectual Property Office considered trademarks contain the vocabulary are registerable, are not pertain to situation with “bad influence”. 3. Many judgements have shown that the applied trademark is not pertain to “bad influence”.

Decision on Rejection of Review
Upon the review, there is no full evidence to prove that the applied trademark “CHRISTIAN LACROIX” as a trademark to use on the designed goods will likely to pose bad social influence, did not constitute the situation stated in Article 10.1.8 of the Trademark Law of P.R .C. The application of applied trademark has been preliminarily approved.

Analysis of Case
According to regulations in “Standards of Reviewing Trademarks” 2016, (5), those are detrimental to religious faith, religious affection or folk religion, “religions” in the standard include Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Christianity, and different branches of religions above. The folk religions in this standard mainly means Mazu and other folk religions.

With any of following situations, trademarks shall not be deemed to be harmful to religious faith, religious affection or folk religions: although words or designs of trademarks are related to religion or folk belief, they have other meanings or their meanings related to religions have been generalized, will not allow the public to associate them with a specific religion or a folk religion.

In this case, “Christian” has other meaning (name) and the meaning is stronger than the meaning of “Christian”, further, “CHRISTIAN” is the name of the founder of the company’s brand and the same name of the brand, pertaining to the situation of “other meaning”. The applied trademark has enjoyed a certain reputation in Chinese consumers by the publicity and usage in domestic and overseas for long time. Moreover, many trademarks “CHRISTIAN LACROIX” have been approved to register on several classes, (including Class 20). Meanwhile, considering non-necessary correlation between “non-metallic pallet” and Christianity, as a result, the application for registering the applied trademark shall be approved.