Well Known Marks
Anjali Shekhawat, 4th Year, B.A.LL.B, Rajiv Gandhi National University of law, Punjab
Abstract
Identification/Representation is the key to human life. A child learns by identifying objects and associating them with sounds/actions/images. The subject of Trademarks thrives on a similar idea. People relate to services/commodities with logos/marks/images presented by the proprietors to represent their business. The fundamental principle of trademark protection has been to safeguard the rights of extensive and established user of a mark who represents his business by that mark, so as not to cause him any harm due to deceptiveness by others. So the basic thing would be that once a mark is taken up for business by one it should not be used by another but obviously the matters in real world are not that easily decided. To achieve simplicity in this area, the idea of prior use, well known mark, goodwill, etc. have been introduced in trademarks law. Once a mark is declared well-known; no other can copy it or adopt a deceptively similar mark in any of the class of goods or services.
