哈佛法律评论：中国申请人在美国申请注册不具字面意义商标造成的危害？

I. NONSENSE MARKS WITHIN EXISTING TRADEMARK LAW

现行商标法下的不具字面意思的商标

Foundational to trademark law is an understanding that trademarks offer social value and therefore should be legally protected. The dominant justification for trademark law within the United States, Search-costs theory, maintains that trademarks are beneficial because consumers recognize them as identifiers of the source of goods they en- counter. This recognition then allows those consumers to rely on trade- marks to streamline their purchasing decisions, minimizing the burden of having to sort through and compare the characteristics of goods each time they want to buy something.But non-sense trademark are generally unpronounceable and difficult to remember or distinguish, nonsense marks fail to do what most companies want marks to do and what the theoretical foundations of trademark law assume that they will do: create a lasting impression on consumers.

商标法的基础是理解商标能产生社会价值，因此应受到法律保护。搜索成本理论是美国商标法中的主要依据，认为商标在消费者辨别商品来源时为其提供了极大便利。消费者通过辨别商标能更快地作出购物选择，极大减少他们每次想买东西时对比商品特性的负担。但是不具字面意思的商标通常难以发音，而且比较难记或区分，因此无法达到大多数公司注册商标的目的，也无法满足商标法理论基础的设定：商标应让消费者留下长久的印象。

While these marks do not work in the way the trademark system assumes they will, paradoxically, it is for that precise reason that they face virtually no barriers to trademark registration. Most applied for marks are required to be distinctive of their source. Nonsense trademark can easily achieve distinctiveness.

尽管不具字面意思的商标并没有遵循商标体系假定的作用方式，但矛盾的是，也正是出于这个原因，使得其在注册时几乎毫无障碍。大多数申请商标要求其具有显著性。而不具字面意思的商标很容易就能满足这一点。

Nonsense marks do not look like trademarks typically look or work the way the trademark system assumes they are supposed to. But be- cause of that quality, rather than in spite of it, nonsense marks easily meet all of the formal requirements for trademark registration and may even receive stronger protections than do many more typical marks. Put another way, within the existing registration system, everything but common sense indicates that these words should be valid trademarks.

不具字面意思的商标看起来与典型商标不同，作用方式也与商标体系假定的不相一致。但正是因为这点特质，不具字面意思的商标很容易就满足商标注册的官方要求，甚至还能比典型商标获得的保护性更强。换句话说，在现有的商标制度下，除去那些表明常识的单词，所有组成都可以成为有效的商标。

Ⅱ. THE HARMS OF NONSENSE MARKS

不具字面意思的商标的危害

First, and most basically, applications for nonsense marks place further stress on an already-strained USPTO. Indeed, examiners, wary of fraudulent marks from China in general, may spend even more time than usual reviewing nonsense marks from Chinese companies. By calling on the resources of the USPTO to achieve their owners’ Amazon-related objectives, nonsense-mark applications themselves impose costs on the USPTO, as well as on other applicants affected by examiners’ greater caseloads and slower review processes.

首先也是最基本的，不具字面意思的商标的申请给处在紧绷状态的美国专利商局带去更多压力。事实上，审查员普遍对来自中国的欺诈性商标持谨慎态度，他们可能比平时花费更多的时间来审查中国公司的不具字面意思的商标申请。不具字面意思的商标申请通过利用美国专利商标局的资源来达到它们亚马逊相关的商业目标，这本身增加了美国专利商标局的成本，同时加重了审查员的案件量负担，也使得审查流程更加缓慢。

Once nonsense marks make it onto the Register, they have the potential to inflict further harm, particularly on traditional mark owners. To avoid opposition from the USPTO or other mark owners, those seeking to register new marks must avoid words that might be seen as confusingly similar to existing marks. If traditional marks were already on the Register, the mark owners might be compelled to invest time and resources arguing that the similar but nonsensical mark presents a likelihood of confusion. Worse, if nonsense marks make it onto the Register first, potential registrants, already facing a diminishing number of “good,” available trademarks, might be hesitant to apply with their marks out of fear of a likelihood-of-confusion rejection. This chilling effect would be particularly acute for smaller businesses, which may not be able to afford a potentially lengthy and expensive registration battle.

一旦不具字面意思的商标得以注册，它们可能会造成进一步损害，特别是对传统的商标所有人而言。为避免美国专利商标局的驳回或其他商标的异议，商标申请人必须避免使用与在先商标近似的文字。若传统商标得以在先注册，传统商标所有人可能被迫投入时间和资源来争辩在先商标与那些近似却不具字面意思的的商标可能造成混淆。更糟的情况是，不具字面意思的商标得以在先注册，潜在的商标注册人面对越来越少“好”的可用商标，并出于对近似驳回的担忧，可能会犹豫申请与否。对小型企业来说，这种寒蝉效应尤其严重，因为它们可能无法承受漫长而昂贵的注册战。

Finally, nonsense marks place considerable strain on the metrics that trademark law relies on to function. As an initial matter, nonsense marks challenge the ability of the Abercrombie spectrum-to identify the value of and consumer reaction to different categories of marks.  Nonsense marks on the Register deepen the cracks in the foundation of one of trademark law’s major sorting mechanisms, calling into question Abercrombie’s legitimacy as an indicator of what makes a “strong” mark and leaving it less stable for those who look to it for guidance.

最后，不具字面意思的商标也对商标法赖以运作的衡量标准造成了相当大的压力。首先，不具字面意思的商标挑战了“阿伯克龙比谱”识别不同商标类别价值和消费者对不同类别反应的能力。不具字面意思的商标的注册动摇了“阿伯克龙比谱”这一商标法主要分类机制的根基，其作为衡量“强”商标指标的合法性及对人们的指导意义也受到了质疑。

Nonsense marks also defy trademark law’s ordinary heuristics for determining whether two marks are confusingly similar — both at the registration stage and in infringement suits. Presented with a likelihood-of-confusion case in which one or both marks consist of a random string of letters, it is not immediately clear how a decision-maker would assess the “similarity or dissimilarity of the marks in their entireties as to appearance, sound, connotation and commercial impression,” a “key consideration in any likelihood of confusion determination.”

不具字面意思的商标也违背了商标法的普通启发法，即在注册阶段和侵权诉讼中判断两个商标是否近似。若在商标近似案件中，存在一个或两个随机字母组合的商标，审查员则无法立刻阐明商标在其外观，声音，含义及商业印象上整体是否近似，也无法评估“任何可能确定混淆性的关键考虑因素”。