Recently, I came across a decision of the Court
of Intellectual Property, which refused to register the trademark “First Prize”. The lottery organizer tried to register the designation for itself. But it was refused: the court considered that the definition “first” indicates that the goods/services of the applicant are the best, superior, deserve an award, approval, first prize.
The applicant objected, citing the polysemy of the word. “First” is the initial, new, main, most important, best. The designation indicates the primacy of something, priority, receiving the award for guinea business email list the first time/earlier than others.
However, these arguments were rejected by the court: “First Prize” is praise, not a priority.
Very often, when submitting a designation for registration of a trademark, entrepreneurs do not have a precise idea of what Rospatent will “allow” and when it will send a refusal. I will tell you more about this.
Unprotected elements of a trademarkTrademark Registration Denied
A name that consists of so-called unprotected elements will not be eligible for registration. These are certain words and symbols that cannot belong exclusively to one owner and remain available to everyone so that no one can use them alone.
What is considered unprotected elements:
- Common terms for a specific area of donate rice while learning a new skill science and technology: cadastre, barista.
- Words indicating the type of activity: pharmacy, shop, bakery.
- Words indicating the type of product: furniture, bread, ice cream.
- Words characterizing goods and services: Moscow, online, floral.
- Letters, numbers, combinations of consonants: 9, 36, A, РКЖ, SDVK.
- Simple graphic elements: lines, geometricTrademark Registration Denied shapes, common icons and symbols (?, #, °C, $).
- Naturalistic images: image of an ice cream cone, cheesecake.
- Common surnames: Ivanov, Bykov, Petrov.
- Domain zones: рф, com, ru.
- Symbols of states and international organizations, phone database unless permission is granted by special authorities: flag, coat of arms, emblem.
- Geographical names, if they are not related to the origin of the goods: Kirov, Vyatka River.
- Words that contradict morality or religion: “Yoshkin kot”, “Saint”.
- Words of praise (“the most”, “the best”, and, as we found out at the beginning of this article, “the first” in the meaning of “the best”).