Trademarks, trademark filing, trademark law

With a trademark, you can protect a certain term for the naming of certain goods and/or services. A prerequisite for this is that this term is not purely descriptive, i.e. has a certain imaginative content, and that this or a similar confusable term is not already protected for a third party.

For example, the term “Schützenfest” (shooting match) for the service “executing cultural and entertainment events” would be a purely descriptive term and therefore one that needs to remain in the public domain.

A trademark application “Kersil” for washing powder would in all probability be registered since this term for washing powder is not descriptive and need not remain in the public domain. The Patent Office does not examine whether earlier or confusable trademarks exist. The proprietor of such a trademark “Kersil” must then expect that after registering the trademark, a third party who has an identical trademark or a similar trademark which can be confused with “Kersil” will file opposition against this registration at the German Patent and Trademark Office or file an infringement suit at a Regional Court responsible for this.

It is therefore recommended that before filing or using brand names, a search should be conducted among registered trademarks and also among company names.

You can get further information from our leaflet on trademark applications in Germany and/or our leaflet on trademark applications abroad.

If you are considering also having your company name or your company identification protected as a trademark, please read the following: trademark law and company identifications

Our office has many years of experience in all questions of trademark law. In our offices in Bremen, Hanover and Oldenburg we shall be pleased to advise you on all aspects of trademark law, in particular trademark applications and trademark infringements.

We have filed and brought to registration a large number of trademarks and are familiar with the relevant searches. We have dealt with objections in the registration process, opposition proceedings both as representatives of the opponent and as representatives of the trademark proprietor and have conducted appeal proceedings on these. We also have a large amount of experience in trademark infringement matters.

If you wish to know how many trademarks we have administered in the databases of the German Patent and Trademark Office as representative, click here and enter the following under expert search: VTR = Jabbusch.