Legal Perspective Of Olympic "Hidden Marketing"

Hidden marketing can be said to be an accompaniment of the Olympic sponsorship business mode, and has nothing to do with the intellectual property protection level of the host country.

So far, the most successful marketing of recessive marketing is just the giants of Nike, which are familiar with the top players in the international sports industry, and are familiar with the rules of intellectual property rights.

To judge and deal with the hidden marketing of Olympic Games, we must respect the rule of law and professionalism.

Implicit marketing is not a strict legal concept. Officials who are in charge of public functions should be cautious.

As long as we do not violate the rules established by the current law, hidden marketing is at most a moral issue.

In this sense, it is somewhat similar to "tax avoidance". Reasonable tax avoidance is a tacit appeal of every enterprise. The more successful a multinational company is, the more skillfully it is to achieve reasonable tax avoidance by making good use of the differences in the tax system of different countries.

In the past two years, there have been quite a few cases in the media speculation about the hidden marketing in China's media: one is Mengniu and Erie's Olympic marketing resentment against the brothers of the same city. The second is whether Staples and BEIFA are suspected of being infringed on the identity of the Staples office furniture supplier for Staples's office furniture supplier.

Although Mengniu and Erie's Olympic marketing competition is very intense from the beginning, I believe that most consumers are like me, that is, they regard this pair of brothers as the palm of their hands, hoping that these two cows can maintain healthy competition like the two happiness of the United States, and set an example for Chinese enterprises to create a benign and orderly competitive atmosphere and business culture.

Although the two music of the United States is fierce competition, when a Coca-Cola employee tried to sell business secrets to Pepsi Cola, he got Pepsi to inform Coca-Cola and assist the FBI to detect the case.

Both companies know that competition must be carried out in a fair and orderly environment. This is the common interest of the two parties. Otherwise, they will have one injury and even two losses.

With regard to the dispute between BEIFA and Staples, if the factors outside the law are excluded, I believe that as a multinational company, Staples will have a layout at the technical level of the law and will not commit any low-level mistakes.

However, the exclusiveness of exclusive suppliers will be very different from the public judgment or professional judgment (contract) for the different product suppliers' Olympic marketing whether they will cause confusion in the relevant products and market.

When dealing with trademark disputes, China's trademark management departments often focus on professional judgment as the standard, and according to trademark law and commodity classification table. However, courts are different in dealing with trademark disputes and unfair competition disputes.

Frankly speaking, although I used BEIFA's products before, I didn't know that BEIFA was an Olympic stationery sponsor. He thought Staples was a stationery supplier, because Staples's advertisements spread all over the streets and streets of Shanghai. The executive departments of the company had already used to buy stationery from them, and there was an Olympic logo. No one noticed whether it was a supplier of furniture or stationery.

This raises a question. If it is easy for the public to mistakenly believe that Staples is an Olympic stationery sponsor, is Staples suspected of infringement and unfair competition against BEIFA?

A lawyer sharply pointed out that on the premise that BEIFA first obtained the qualification of stationery sponsor and signed a contract with its rival Staples to accept its sponsorship as furniture sponsor, the lawyer obviously violated the sports sponsor's "one mountain not two tiger" regulations.

So, even though Staples's executives are confident that BEIFA will appeal, it is assumed that BEIFA really started the legal action of safeguarding rights after the Olympic Games (without doubt that it will become a very difficult lawsuit). Whether Staples and the OCOG have sufficient reasons to win the lawsuit is hard to estimate now.

Although judging from the professional judgment standard of law and technology, everything is compliance, but in China's trademark law and the judgement standard of anti unfair competition law, it is "related public". The relevant public of stationery is the public. Although the marketing of Staples is marked by furniture sponsors, its propaganda has always been advertised by office supplies, office furniture has not gone beyond the category of office products, and should belong to the same or similar commodities. Therefore, sponsors who are on the same or similar commodities are obviously suspected to infringe exclusive rights of the exclusive stationery suppliers, and should be confused and misleading to the public.

In the past, even if the legal registered trademark was suspected of violating the copyright, the Chinese courts were often difficult to deal with because of the lack of grammatical law.

However, there are many such things. The Supreme People's court is clear in the form of judicial interpretation, and involves the conflict of intellectual property rights, in order to protect the prior civil rights.

Therefore, legitimate registered trademarks can no longer compete with the rights of the prior copyright owners.

According to the provisions of the Supreme Court's case of civil cases, the relevant commercial license contract of the Olympic Games belongs to the category of intellectual property cases.

As for the suggestion that some people should put forward the legislative regulation on the alleged infringement of implicit marketing, I believe that it is unlikely to become a reality.

Because no one has ever been able to become an eternal sponsor of the Olympic Games, and who will be willing to lose the Olympic business opportunity once he is excluded from the ranks of official sponsors?

There must be more business groups opposed to this move than official sponsors.

Therefore, the hidden marketing of Olympic Games will not disappear in the foreseeable future.

The identity of the official sponsor will enable enterprises to take the lead before and after the Olympic Games. However, the road to business success is always in good faith management. As an event marketing, the Olympics is just icing on the cake. If you look forward to sponsoring the Olympic Games to eat a big fat man, it's not a great disappointment, but also a bad digestion.