The Woongjin Group, a Korean conglomerate ranked among the top 30 companies in South Korea, is involved in a wide range of industries including publishing, distribution, beauty, education, networking, and multimedia. Its main logo is highly creative and design-oriented.

In this case, the disputed mark is identical with the Woongjin’s mark, but the goods are not similar. In the absence of any other prior rights, we firmly argued that Woongjin has prior copyright ownership of the mark. After the first instance and second instance trials, Beijing Supreme People's Court ultimately held in the rehearing decision that Woongjin’s logo in the work of arts is not composed of common letters, but co-invented words, and it contains two graphics resembling glasses. In terms of presentation, it can reflect the designer's selection, arrangement, and design of letters, graphics, lines, penwork, and structure to some extent. It is creative and belongs to the work of arts protected by the Copyright Law. The copyright enjoyed by the Woongjin Group should be protected. Before the application date of the disputed mark, the Woongjin Group has published the work shown in the figure attached. Under this circumstance, the disputed mark is identical with Woongjin’s logo in the work of arts, which infringes upon the copyright enjoyed by the Woongjin Group over the work and violates Article 31 of the Trademark Law. Therefore, the disputed mark shall not be approved for registration.

For the copyright of works involved in word marks, it is usually difficult to protect. However, in this case, through the collection of evidence related to the work, the emphasis on the creativity of the words in the work, and their special design ultimately allowed the copyright enjoyed by the work to come into play.