• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.63-77
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• 2003

This study was to analyze the trademarks of The Polo Lauren Company in fashion products and its analogous trademarks that have been applied or registered in the Korean Patent Office. The data was collected from the Korean Patent Office and KIPRIS search system was used. Total 468 trademarks applied by the date of September 10, 2003 including 317 registered trademarks of the Polo Lauren Company and 151 its analogous trademarks applied for fashion products, were used for the analysis. The results were follows. (1) Total 73 different types of trademarks of the Polo Lauren Company were registered for 26 product classification. Trademarks were composed of all possible combination of letter, sign and sketch to prevent the registration of its analogous trademark. Also even the same trademarks were registered for each different product classification. Since the early 1990s the extended trademarks for each segments reflecting diverse lifestyles were frequently registered. (2) Total 134 trademarks that had applied for registration were rejected due to its analogousness to the Polo Lauren. Most of them were seem to purposely analogous to mislead and to confuse consumers. The major type was to add one or two words as brand extention to the genuine Polo brand. Next type was minor modification of genuine trademark. The last type was almost same brand names in different product categories. (3) Total 3 trademarks were not permit to register by the objection of the Polo Lauren Company. Total 19 trademarks were permit to register. Those showed low degree of analogousness. However most of these trademarks were cancelled by the lawsuit of the Polo Lauren company.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.56 no.6 s.105
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• pp.153-167
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• 2006

This study was purposed to analyse the registration of Korean Fashion brands in China and to point out problems by the registration of analogous trademarks to Korean brand names. List of total 137 Korean national brands were used to collect trademarks in Chinese Trademark Office and each trademark was analysed by the nationally and the date of registration. Analogy of registered trademarks were classified by the common traits. In Result, only 61 Korean national brands were registered by Korean fashion firms in China and 37 Korean national brands were registered by Chinese firms or individuals in the same product classification or in the similar fashion product classification. And 22 Korean national brands out of 61 registered by Korean firms were also registered by Chinese firms, which may lead confusion and misidentification to Chinese consumers. Pre-registration by the Chinese firms f9r analogous or identical trademarks of the Korean fashion brand names in analogous product classification should be a serious entry barrier to Chinese market.