What is the difference between a company name and a trademark?
A company name is the name of a company or enterprise as a legal person. It belongs to a kind of legal person's personal rights and cannot be transferred. It exists with the existence of the legal person and disappears with the demise of the legal person. Legal persons need to use the corporate name when participating in civil activities as civil subjects, such as signing contracts and mortgaging payments. The company name must be approved and registered before it can be obtained. The General Principles of Civil Law equate the name rights of legal persons as personal rights with the name rights of individual industrial and commercial households as property rights, and both allow transfer, which may confuse the essential difference between personal rights and property rights.
"Trademark" is a distinctive sign used to identify a certain product, service, or a specific individual, enterprise or organization related to it
An enterprise not only needs to have one, several or many trademarks to distinguish its goods and services from its competitors, but also needs to distinguish itself from other enterprises. This kind of logo or name that distinguishes this enterprise from another enterprise is the enterprise name, also known as the trade name.
Foreign countries generally require the name of a company to reflect the nature and business purpose of the company. According to my country's "Enterprise Name Registration Management Regulations" and other relevant regulations, an enterprise name consists of four basic elements in order, namely administrative division, trade name, industry and organizational form. Among these elements, administrative divisions, industries and organizational forms are general terms that can distinguish enterprises in different administrative divisions, different industries and different organizational forms, but they cannot be used as distinctions between specific enterprises, that is, they cannot be based on This distinguishes company A from company B, and the logo that distinguishes a specific company is mainly the font size. The font size is the core element of the company name and the main symbol that distinguishes one company from other companies.
According to the relevant regulations for enterprise name registration in my country, the font size should consist of two or more Chinese characters; administrative divisions are not allowed to be used as font sizes, but place names of administrative divisions above the county level have other characters. Except for those with different meanings; the name of a natural person or investor can be used as a business name. Therefore, the trade name has special significance in our country. It is only one component of the company name and is different from the so-called trade name.
Company name and businessThe marks have something in common, that is, they all have an identification function. The difference from a trademark is that a company name is used to distinguish one company from other companies, rather than to distinguish the goods sold or services provided by different companies.
Company names are generally composed of long words, which are often inconvenient to use in daily business activities. Therefore, for practical purposes, companies often use abbreviations or abbreviated names, or other simple titles. According to Article 20 of my country's "Enterprise Name Registration Management Regulations": "The name used in the enterprise's seal, bank account, plaque, and letterhead should be the same as the registered one.
The names of enterprises are the same. The name plaques of enterprises engaged in commerce, public catering, services and other industries can be simplified, but they should be reported to the registration authority for filing." Article 37 of the "Implementation Measures for Enterprise Name Registration and Management" of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce stipulates: "The enterprise name used in an enterprise's seal, bank account, letterhead, products or packaging, etc., shall be the same as the enterprise name on its business license." These regulations show that my country adopts a strict control attitude towards the use of abbreviations in company names.