Music Trademark: New Development of Intellectual Property in Digital Economy

Abstract

With the vigorous development of digital economy, the enterprise must pay more attention to the Internet instead of totally the traditional way, and new types of trademarks, especially music trademark, can attract the attention of consumers more than traditional trademarks. But situation is different in different countries and international organization. This paper takes China and the European Union as the research objects, and observes the specific standards in the practical operation of registering new trademarks such as music trademarks both in China and in the European Union through studying a large number of cases and analyzing local laws in comparative study. In China, a music that wants to be registered as a trademark needs to have at least three requirements: legitimacy, distinctive and long-term and heavy use. EU and its member states have different requirements for whether a music is allowed to be registered as a trademark. When member states want to make their own trademark law according to the EU law, they have their own domestic practices and customs of the member states so they finally formed the different trademark legal system from each other. However, music is now generally accepted as a registered trademark in the European Union.