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SIMULTANEOUS USE OF MUL-TIPLE FAMOUS MARKS NOT AUTOMATICALLY INFRINGING
The Trademark Act expressly provides that us-ing a mark identical with or similar to a regis-tered trademark on the same or similar goods or services without the consent of the trademark owner is likely to constitute trademark in-fringement. But the courts have taken differing views as to whether simultaneous use of trade-marks belonging to different owners necessarily infringes those trademarks.
In a 2006 criminal judgment involving the si-multaneous use of multiple famous-brand trademarks on work overalls, the Hsinchu Dis-trict Court held that such use did not infringe the trademarks concerned. The court found that the defendant had used the various trademarks solely for decoration of the garments, rather than as marks to identify a source of goods, and there had been no likelihood of consumers being confused or misled.
This judgment highlights a potential risk in trademark protection. Not only for trademark infringement, a similar situation might also arise in trademark registration applications: if an ap-plicant were to seek registration of a mark composed of a combination of multiple famous marks, and if it were to be held that there was no likelihood of such a combination causing confu-sion, or diluting the distinctiveness of a mark already registered or used, or damaging the commercial reputations associated with the marks concerned, and if registration were thus granted, this would create huge impact on trademark owners who had previously registered or used the trademarks concerned.