Article 6 of the Paris Convention stipulates the principle of trademark independence. Paragraph 1 of this article stipulates that “the conditions for trademark application and registration shall be determined by the national laws of each country in the Union.” Under this premise, the same trademark is protected independently in different member countries. Specifically, the independence of trademarks stipulated in the Convention is reflected in the following two aspects:
First, a contracting state shall not refuse a national of another contracting state on the grounds that they have not applied, registered or renewed in their country of origin. Nor shall it invalidate the registration. When a contracting state examines a trademark registration application from a national of another contracting state, it shall conduct an examination in accordance with the conditions stipulated in its domestic law to decide whether to approve the registration, and shall not rely on the fact that the trademark has not been applied for in the applicant's country of origin or has not been registered or has not been renewed. refusal to register for any reason. For a trademark that has been approved for registration, if the owner's trademark registration in the country of origin expires or expires without renewal, the registration country shall not declare the registration invalid.
Second, trademarks officially registered in a contracting country and trademarks registered in other contracting countries, including trademarks registered in the country of origin, should be considered independent of each other. This shows that each contracting country only protects trademarks approved and registered in its own country in accordance with its own laws, and is not affected by the protection status of the same trademark in other countries. If the trademark is revoked or invalidated for some reason in a certain country, the effect of such revocation or invalidation will only apply to that country and will not have any impact on registrations in other countries.
The independence of a trademark is basically the same as that of a patent. However, there is an important exception to trademark independence. Article 6quinquies of the Paris Convention details exceptions to trademark independence.
Article 4bis, paragraph 1, of the Paris Convention stipulates that “the patents applied for by nationals of the member states of the Union to each member state of the Union are not the same as those applied for by nationals of the member states of the Union or in other member states of the Union or non-members of the Union. It has nothing to do with the patents obtained by the country for the same invention." This is what is commonly referred to as the principle of patent independence.