Trademark Registration Agent "Free Lunch" Cited Controversy

< p > in recent years, the competition in the trademark agency industry has intensified. Some agencies have attracted numerous criticism by attracting customers through the price war.

Therefore, when a company that claimed to provide free trademark registration agency service appeared in a high-profile manner, it suddenly caused a great stir in the whole industry.

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P, known as "Guo Guo Guo", was founded in April 26, 2014. It is the first electronic business platform to provide professional intellectual property legal services in China.

In June 25th, less than 2 months on the line, the fruit announced that it had won the early investment of Lenovo star millions of dollars.

It is understood that as of July 15th, know Guo has provided 515 ordinary domestic trademark registration agency services.

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< p > a series of figures can not help wondering: what kind of magic weapon do you know that fruit can get such rapid development in such a short time? The answer is very simple: know Guo Guo to provide "free lunch" - its domestic ordinary trademark registration agency service, free!! < /p >

< p > because a lot of manpower is required to apply for a registered trademark, the trademark agency usually charges certain fees when acting for trademark registration.

According to industry sources, the cost of registration of a trademark by most agencies in the country is usually 1800 yuan, including the official fee paid to the Trademark Office 800 yuan, and the agency fee is 1000 yuan.

The highest agency fee is about 1300 yuan, the lowest is only two hundred or three hundred yuan.

Under normal circumstances, the scale of operation, the higher reputation agency fees are higher, and the small micro agency charges are lower.

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< p >, however, the appearance of "know fruit" broke the charging mode.

The platform has provided free registration service for trademark registration since its launch. During the Brazil World Cup this year, it launched the "watching the world cup is not important, the domestic trademark registration continues to be free, it is important, and immediately rob" activities, providing < a href= "http:// www.91se91.com/news/index_c.asp" > free service < /a >.

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< p > Why do we need to provide free trademark agency services? Liu Sisi, founder and CEO of know fruit, explained the reason in the interview: compared with trademark registration, know fruit is better at overall operation and planning of intellectual property rights, so it is willing to let the profits of registration link out.

On the one hand, we should reduce the initial investment of small and medium-sized enterprises to create their own brands and help enterprises upgrade their brands. On the other hand, we hope that more enterprises can experience the services provided by fruit and provide further cooperation in a wider field.

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Before P, Liu Sisi said that he knew that the profit point of intellectual property services would be pformed from the traditional "run errands" simple agency service to the later professional services such as intellectual property rights maintenance, forcing himself and even the whole industry to make more efforts in value-added services.

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< p > for this reason, Dai Jiapeng, lawyer of Jun Mei (Beijing) Intellectual Property Agency Limited, believes that there is not much novelty in the free agent of trademark registration. In the case of fierce competition in the agent market, many agents lacking the core competitiveness first choose the price war.

He said: "judging from the development of recent years, the agency that has won success through price war seems to have not yet appeared."

In his view, trademark registration, especially in the early stage, has a high technical content. If we think that the early work is just errands and the latter is the focus of service, then this understanding is putting the cart before the horse.

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< p > there is no coincidence that < a href= "http:// www.91se91.com/news/index_c.asp" > Beijing < /a > > Wu Xinhua, lawyer of Wei Heng law firm, holds similar views.

He believes that if the original trademark search is not done well and the application for trademark registration is submitted to the customer at any time, then the application of the trademark registration will be free if the conflict with the prior trademark is rejected. The official fees of the customer application are also paid off. If the customer's < a href= "http:// www.91se91.com/news/index_c.asp" > trademark < /a > has been put into use, the loss will be greater, which is obviously not a responsible attitude.

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< p > Wu Xinhua said that if the agency wants to improve the professional standard and service quality of the trademark agency service, first of all, it should abandon the competitive mode of low price or even free, start from the foundation, take every trademark registration application of every customer seriously, and carry out patient, meticulous search, analysis and evaluation to select the most favorable application registration scheme for customers, reduce and avoid legal risk in advance, instead of static customers such as "no disease or illness" or "minor disease and serious illness", and then seek to collect high agency fees.

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In response to these questions, Liu Sisi responded to P.

She said that members of the know fruit team were professionals engaged in intellectual property work for many years. They knew that the early work of the intellectual property service industry was very professional and important, and could not be understood merely as "errands".

However, knowing fruit has a starting point since its establishment, that is, let service return to its essence and win by professional services.

In her view, intellectual property services involve multiple levels - creation, application, protection and management, and each point has corresponding services to support it, knowing that intellectual property rights really become intangible assets of enterprises, not just from the perspective of protection.

"Know fruit and fruit more hope to help enterprises understand how to make brand planning and how to enhance the value of intellectual property."

She said.

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< p > July 14th, the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce promulgated the notice on the filing of trademark agencies.

As of April 30, 2014, a total of 19300 trademark agencies (including 8282 law firms) filed for trademark agency business in the trademark office.

According to statistics, over the past 5 years, more than 95% of the applications for trademark registration have been submitted by agents of trademark agencies every year.

The trademark agency industry has provided professional and meticulous service for Chinese enterprises in trademark registration, early warning, rights protection and legal consultation, and has played a positive role in promoting China's economic and social development.

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< p > Yang Jingan, lawyer of Beijing pcendental Intellectual Property Agency Limited, believes that the appearance of "know fruit" has raised a waking up for the intellectual property agency, that is, the application for trademark agency is a professional comprehensive service, whether it is in the early stage, middle stage or late stage, it should be treated with caution.

The effect of free registration agency mode remains to be tested in practice.

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