Companies should be able to register single letters as trade marks, says top court advisor
10th May 2010
A legal advisor to the European Union's top court has said that single-letters can be registered as trademarks. The advisor has said that the EU's trademarks office should not have been rejecting applications for single letter marks.
European trade mark law the Community Trade Marks Regulation says that something cannot be registered as a trade mark if it is "devoid of distinctive character".
Trade mark examination office the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) had been rejecting applications to register single letters as trademarks because of the 'distinctive character' rule.
Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) Yves Bot has written a legal opinion saying that such rejections should not be automatic. While not all single letter applications should be accepted, he said, they should not automatically be rejected.
CJEU advocates general provide a legal opinion after a hearing which the Court's judges can choose to base their rulings on or not.
OHIM's own guidelines said that it would only allow single letters or numbers to be registered as trademarks if they are heavily stylised
Article sourced from OUT-LAW.COM, to read the article in full please click here