Characters of trademarks are similar in terms of fonts, sounds and meanings, using on the identical or similar goods or services, are liable to mislead the origin of the goods or services among the public, they should be identified as similarity. In the practice, three measures, i.e. whole comparison, comparison of important parts and isolation comparison, are usually taken to examine whether character trademarks are similar or not. Among them, “comparison of important parts” means to compare distinctive parts of trademarks, in the other words, the part, which will serve as the main identification for the trademark, will be extracted to go through the comparison.

The distinctive part of a trademark means this part is the dominant position, furthermore, it will decide the whole image of the trademark and serve as the main recognition function. Taking the opposition case regarding the trademark “中旅小龙坎”(Zhong Lv Xiao Long Kan in Pinyin) under the trademark no. 28743421 as an example, the trademark “中旅小龙坎”(Zhong Lv Xiao Long Kan in Pinyin) under the trademark no. 28743421 has been refused for the registration as per (2020) No. 70701 decision made by China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNPIA). The decision held that the trademark “中旅小龙坎”(Zhong Lv Xiao Long Kan in Pinyin) completed contains distinctive parts of trademarks, i.e. “中旅” (Zhong Lv in Pinyin), “中旅CTS” (Zhong Lv in Pinyin and CTS), “小龙坎” (Xiao Long Kan in Pinyin), “小龙坎XIAOLONGKAN及图” (Xiao Long Kan in Pinyin XIAOLONGKAN and Device), which are separately registered by China Tourism Group Co., Ltd. and Sichuan Ren Zhong Investment Management Co., Ltd. There are no obvious changes in words’ meanings, therefore, the trademark “中旅小龙坎”(Zhong Lv Xiao Long Kan in Pinyin)” has been refused for the registration based on the judgement of similar trademarks on the similar or identical services. 

We can see from the decision of refusal of the trademark that, “中旅” (Zhong Lv in Pinyin) and “小龙坎” (Xiao Long Kan in Pinyin) are main marks separately to China Tourism Group Co., Ltd. and Sichuan Ren Zhong Investment Management Co., Ltd. They have highly recognizable to the public, also, characters of trademarks possess high distinctiveness, the trademark “中旅小龙坎”(Zhong Lv Xiao Long Kan in Pinyin) with no. 28743421 contains predominant parts of trademarks of different main bodies, this is easy to confuse the origin of services among the public, obviously, they have constituted similar trademarks. Hence, China National Intellectual Property Administration decided to refuse the registration of the trademark “中旅小龙坎”(Zhong Lv Xiao Long Kan in Pinyin), it shows that the distinctiveness of a trademark plays an important role on the judgement of the similarity.