Cultural Contestations in Global Trademark Law: Toward a "Cognitive Justice" Framework Beyond Orientalist-Colonial and Western-Centric Paradigms

Against the backdrop of expanding global trade and accelerating cultural commodification, cultural ownership disputes arising from transnational trademark registrations have become increasingly prominent. The current international trademark regime often faces a conflict between Western-centric paradigms and multicultural claims when protecting cultural symbols. On this basis, this article employs an interdisciplinary perspective of critical legal studies and postcolonial critique within trademark law to systematically examine how trademark law functions as an institutional arena for cultural power struggles in the context of globalization. The study reveals that beneath the technocratic faade of trademark law lies its deep-seated modern colonial cognitive logic. On one hand, this has historical roots: 19th-century colonial legal systems reconstructed non-Western cultural symbols as appropriable private property through strategies of decontextualization and commodification. On the other hand, it extends to contemporary international trademark institutions via Eurocentric knowledge production models, which utilize legal requirements such as distinctiveness and non-functionality as contemporary colonial legal tools to systematically deny the cultural sovereignty of non-Western entities and increase the difficulty of trademark registration or lead to refusal. Accordingly, this article further proposes that trademark law reform must take Cognitive Justice as its fundamental guiding principle to promote the healthy and positive development of trademark law globalization, break the Western-dominated model, foster healthy and steady growth in global trade and economy, and construct a new ecological economic model centered on cultural exportation.