When confirming trademark rights, applicants often need to remove cited trademarks that obstruct their registration; When maintaining a trademark, the trademark owner needs to remove potential registered trademarks.

The means of removing a trademark are usually divided into three types: opposition, invalidation declaration, and revocation of not using it for three consecutive years (commonly known as revocation three). 

How to correctly choose the means of removing a trademark in order to achieve twice the result with half the effort is something that every trademark owner needs to master. 

In this article, I will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of these three methods themselves, as well as the specific situations in which they are used:

Objection: 

The trademark announcement period is a stage that must be passed through during the trademark application and registration stage. After the three-month announcement period ends, if there are no objections from third parties, the trademark is registered. 

For trademark owners, opposition is an essential means of safeguarding their rights. Objections have the opportunity to successfully revoke the trademark before suspected trademark registration.

However, based on recent data, if the goods/services of both parties are not similar, even if the prior trademark has a certain level of popularity, the success rate of opposition is not very high.

Revocation three: 

If a trademark has been registered for more than three years, anyone has the right to submit an application for revocation of the trademark for three consecutive years of non use.

The trademark owner must submit evidence of the use of the trademark within three years. If no evidence of use can be provided, or if the provided evidence does not meet the requirements, the trademark will be revoked.

Compared to other methods of removing trademarks, revoking a trademark requires the least amount of documents and the shortest processing time. However, the success rate of revocation depends entirely on whether the trademark owner uses the trademark within the prescribed period, and even if their use is clearly malicious, it will be judged as trademark use.

In addition, the revoked trademark is only revoked because it has not been used, and has no reference value for trademarks maliciously registered or applied for by the same owner. 

Therefore, revocation is very suitable for removing prior trademarks that are not malicious in trademark applications.

Invalidation declaration: 

Invalidation declaration is the subsequent procedure taken for a trademark that has been approved for registration through the opposition procedure (not established). In recent years, the success rate of objections in non similar goods/services has been low, and invalidation has gradually become the best choice for trademark owners to maintain trademark rights in other categories and combat malicious registration behavior.

In the invalidation procedure, the trademark owner can obtain information about the other party's company structure, trademark usage, and actual malicious intent through the cross examination process, and retaliate. After winning the invalidation declaration, it can also be used as favorable evidence in similar cases against the same owner in the future.

In addition, the invalidation procedure also examines whether there is a certain degree of correlation between the goods/services in real life, so the winning rate is relatively high for cases with similar trademarks and high correlation between goods/services. 

However, invalidation declaration is also a time-consuming and relatively expensive procedure. In order to save time and costs, some trademark owners may choose to skip the opposition process and directly apply for invalidation.

However, the invalidation declaration also has a disadvantage, that is, the applied trademark must be a registered trademark, and before being declared invalid, it has all the rights of a registered trademark.

Based on the above analysis, each of the three methods for removing obstructive trademarks has its own advantages. The trademark owner needs to choose the right means to maximize the winning rate. Normally, we recommend that trademark owners use a combination of punches based on different situations to comprehensively protect their legitimate rights and interests.