Similar Trademarks Research Articles

Perjanjian Koeksistensi Merek dan Letter of Consent terhadap Merek yang Memiliki Unsur Persamaan pada Pokoknya

A trademark serves as the identity of a product and/or service, representing the quality and reputation associated with it. In the process of trademark registration, it is inevitable that several trademarks may bear similarities and are at risk of rejection by the Directorate General of Intellectual Property (DGIP). To address this issue, some strategies include the establishment of Trademark Coexistence Agreements or Letters of Consent (LOC). This research aims to explore the roles of Trademark Coexistence Agreements and LOCs in overcoming the challenges of registering trademarks that share similarities. The methodology employed is normative legal research, involving analysis of relevant legislation and secondary data from related literature. The findings indicate that both Trademark Coexistence Agreements and LOCs can assist trademark owners in reaching agreements regarding the use of similar trademarks. However, the application of these instruments in Indonesia has not been explicitly regulated. The conclusion of this study underscores the necessity for clearer legislative policies and support for the practice of utilizing Trademark Coexistence Agreements and LOCs to streamline the trademark registration process and promote innovation in the market.

Pendaftaran Merek yang Memiliki Persamaan pada Pokoknya pada Kelas Berbeda dalam Perspektif Peraturan Perundang-Undangan

Simply said, a brand is any kind of distinctive symbol or name used in commercial contexts. There is still some gray area in Indonesia's trademark recording rules when it comes to the idea of basically identical trademarks and how to register ones that are quite similar to others in various classifications. From a legislative standpoint, this study intends to explore the notion of fundamental similarities in brands and its restrictions. It will also evaluate the recording of substantially similar trademarks in various classes in Indonesia. Using the framework of UU No 20 of 2016 concerning Marks and Geographical Indications, the study approach employed is normative legal research, which looks at the recording of trademarks in various classes that are basically comparable. Because the idea of similarity in essence is subjective and open to different interpretations by different people, the study's findings reveal that trademark recording requirements are vague on the issue. Nevertheless, while looking at statutory requirements, it is possible to register marks that are essentially similar to existing marks under UU No. 20 of 2016, provided that the marks are in a separate class.

DarwinGSE: Towards better image retrieval systems for intellectual property datasets.

A trademark's image is usually the first type of indirect contact between a consumer and a product or a service. Companies rely on graphical trademarks as a symbol of quality and instant recognition, seeking to protect them from copyright infringements. A popular defense mechanism is graphical searching, where an image is compared to a large database to find potential conflicts with similar trademarks. Despite not being a new subject, image retrieval state-of-the-art lacks reliable solutions in the Industrial Property (IP) sector, where datasets are practically unrestricted in content, with abstract images for which modeling human perception is a challenging task. Existing Content-based Image Retrieval (CBIR) systems still present several problems, particularly in terms of efficiency and reliability. In this paper, we propose a new CBIR system that overcomes these major limitations. It follows a modular methodology, composed of a set of individual components tasked with the retrieval, maintenance and gradual optimization of trademark image searching, working on large-scale, unlabeled datasets. Its generalization capacity is achieved using multiple feature descriptions, weighted separately, and combined to represent a single similarity score. Images are evaluated for general features, edge maps, and regions of interest, using a method based on Watershedding K-Means segments. We propose an image recovery process that relies on a new similarity measure between all feature descriptions. New trademark images are added every day to ensure up-to-date results. The proposed system showcases a timely retrieval speed, with 95% of searches having a 10 second presentation speed and a mean average precision of 93.7%, supporting its applicability to real-word IP protection scenarios.

LAW ENFORCEMENT AGAINST TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT IN INDONESIA

Trademark as part of intellectual property rights is one of the most important elements in the business world. The number of trademark infringements that occurred in Indonesia from 2015 to 2023 shows an increasing trend. The purposes of this research are to explore and analyze the cause of trademark infringement and to investigate how efforts should be made to solve and reduce the number of trademark infringements in Indonesia. This research is normative legal research underpinned by interviews as well as through library research. Interviews were conducted with resource persons using interview guidelines. Then, data were analyzed using qualitative analysis. The result shows that the reason for trademark infringement is economic reasons. The offending party has bad intentions and assumes that the business whose trademark is to be imitated has good potential and person concerned can obtain a reasonable profit (good turnover potential) if using the same or similar trademark. The second is the party whose trademark is used by another party without rights needs to make a complaint about the trademark infringement because the infringement of intellectual property rights (including trademark infringement) is a complaint of violation that must be reported by the injured party to the law enforcer.

The Adequacy of Jordanian Legislation in Protecting the Trademark to Attract Foreign Investments

Aim: This study aims to explain the entity of a trademark, its commercial trademark standards and judicial applications involved, the effect of trademark protection on attraction of foreign investments, aspects of trademark which attracts foreign investments within Jordanian and international legislations and the position of Jordanian law towards the famous and infamous trademark in protection without distinction. Implications: The trademark has become the center of attention to all countries including Jordan, and due to expansion in its use among products and services, countries and governments including Jordan decided to form legislations and laws organizing this purpose which guarantee the rights of all to attract foreign investments, taking into consideration the rapid technological development which influences expansion of the trademark and attraction of foreign investments, as this study shows the legal framework of the trademark and legal protection to it. Method: The researcher adopted the descriptive analytical method in the study to achieve the desired goals through the use of previous studies, laws, legislations, world and Jordanian agreements organizing this topic. Results: The study reached a number of results including: firstly, the trademark legal provisions in the Paris Agreement (1883), the TRIPS Agreement (1994), the Trademark Law No. (33) of the year (1952), and the Unfair Competition and Trade Secrets Law No. (15) of the year (2000) worked to protect trademarks, which helps attract foreign investments to Jordan. Secondly, expansion of the framework of protection of a trademark in Paris Agreement, where it extended to include the service mark side by side to a trademark and industry mark, and its registration and use include similar and different products and thirdly, Jordanian Trademark Law No. (34) of 1999 regarding trademark protection and preventing the registration of a trademark that is similar or identical, or shapes another trademark, or the use of another similar trademark upon registration that imitates international agreements, which upholds attracting foreign investments to Jordan.

Use of Similar Trademarks According to Law Number 20 of 2016 Concerning Trademarks and Geographical Indications (Case Study of Supreme Court Decision Number 162K/Pdt.Sus-HKI/2021)

In this modern era, people's creativity is growing rapidly, this has led to the birth of innovative products. To be able to distinguish these products are usually called trademarks. The research method used is juridical-normative and literature approach. Trademarks are the essence of the smooth trading of goods or services. In accordance with the trademark system in Indonesia according to the National Legal Development Agency (BPHN), namely the first to file principle system, meaning that the owner of a trademark license registers his trademark with the Director General of Intellectual Property Rights first. Regulations regarding these trademarks are stipulated by the Indonesian government with the aim of avoiding similarities between products in circulation. However, there are still many disputes regarding similar trademarks, and settlement of trademark disputes can be carried out if the licensee files a lawsuit against the Commercial Court. Another alternative in dispute resolution is arbitration.

Legal Analysis of the IKEA Trademark Removal Dispute Case (Study of Decision Number 165 PK/Pdt.Sus/2012)

Brands have an important function for their owners, especially in the era of global trade. Trademarks provide an indication of the origin and quality of the goods or services traded. Trademark owners have the exclusive right to authorize or prohibit others from using the same or similar trademarks as theirs. Indonesia uses a constitutive registration system, in which exclusive rights are given to registered marks. Trademark applicants may not register the same mark as another well-known trademark. Registered trademark must be used. Trademark cancellation is carried out when the brand has not been used for three consecutive years. In general, trademark revocation occurs when a mark is not used in trade in goods and services. If the former owner still wants the same trademark rights, he/she must apply for trademark registration and go through the entire registration procedure. If the other party applies for the mark first, the old owner can object. If this effort fails, he can submit an annulment to the Commercial Court, cassation, and review.

Design piracy: An interdisciplinary investigation into competitive industrial behavior

Design piracy: An interdisciplinary investigation into competitive industrial behavior

The Risk of Confusion in Trademark Infringement in South Africa and Kenya: Lessons from Singapore?

The risk of confusion in trademarks is exponentially high in light of international trade. Where identical or similar marks are used in the course of trade by different companies, this may result in consumers being confused with regard to the origin of the goods. Consumer confusion may result in the proprietor of the trademark suffering financial loss if customers start buying competitors’ goods or services. Most legal systems including those of South Africa and Kenya consequently have laws that contain provisions that seek to protect proprietors from the use of identical or similar trademarks in a manner that is likely to create deception or confusion among members of the public. The article discusses the approach to the likelihood of confusion inquiry in trademark infringement under the South African Trademarks Act 194 of 1993 and Kenya’s Trademarks Act 4 of 2002. Singapore’s step-by- step approach is examined as a best practice when assessing the likelihood of confusion in confusion-based infringement. It is argued that instead of South Africa and Kenya applying the global assessment approach, which seems to confuse and collapse the elements, a step-by-step approach should be preferred. The need to eliminate confusion when applying the elements of confusion-based infringement cannot be overemphasised in order to ensure predictability and consistency in Kenya and South Africa’s case law.

Compliance with the Principle of Legality in the Pronunciation of a Judicial Decision for Trademark Offenses

The crime of putting a product into circulation bearing an identical or similar trademark to a registered trademark for identical or similar products aims to sanction any attempt to mislead consumers and create a false representation of the original character of a product in commercial circuit. The article presents the conditions that must be met for the pronouncement of a conviction for this crime, the way of establishing the procedural framework, but also the criteria that must be respected for granting compensation in favor of the trademark owner, the aspects being analyzed through the lens of respecting the principle of legality in the pronouncement of a judgment judicial.

Revoking Trademark Consent: Can It Be Done?

In 2022, Dallas Mavericks guard, Luka Doncic, was engaged in a quiet, albeit significant legal dispute with his mother. The dispute centered around Doncic’s attempt to register a new trademark to use for various goods and services. Doncic, however, previously gave his mother consent to use his name and likeness for a similar trademark, which was officially registered in 2018. Due to the likelihood of confusion, and his mother’s unwillingness to cede her rights in the outdated mark, Doncic was prevented from registering his new mark. Thus, Doncic filed a cancellation petition with the USPTO, which argued he should be able to withdraw the consent he gave to his mother. By doing so, Doncic posed a novel question: can trademark consent be revoked? This Comment attempts to answer this question by analyzing the Lanham Act, surveying case law, and considering expert opinions. Alternatively, the other arguments contained in Doncic’s cancellation petition are likewise evaluated to forge a way to cancel the existing trademark despite the issue of consent. While Doncic ultimately dropped his claim against his mother, the question of revoking consent remains imperative because of its implications on college NIL deals. College athletes utilize trademarks to protect their brand and advance their NIL interests. However, whether due to minor status, business inexperience, or other time commitments, college athletes may give consent to others to register a trademark using their name and likeness. This Comment explores many practical safeguards that college athletes can take to prevent disputes such as Doncic’s.

Bimbingan Kekayaan Intelektual Merek Jasa “Kelas 35” Paguyuban Batik Tulis Kebon Indah, Bayat, Klaten

The Kebon Indah Batik Tulis Society currently has a registered brand with the Ministry of Law and Human Rights since 2010 with the brand name "Kebon Indah". Outside the Paguyuban, there are similar trademark registrations by other parties, so it is necessary to register for an extension of the “Kebon Indah” trademark protection period. The specific purpose of this service activity is to provide technical guidance on the registration of the extension of the "Kebon Indah" brand protection period and register the "Kebon Indah" brand in the service business category. The method of service activities will use an intense mentoring method, namely assistance with field practice techniques so that partners are the main actors in this activity. The mentoring method consists of 5 core stages, namely 1) Discussion, 2) Preparation of service mark registration files, 3) Technical guidance on trademark or service mark registration, 4) Registering with the Ministry of Law and Human Rights and 5) Ongoing mentoring. The service activities have been carried out well and the results are very satisfying. In the context of sustainable activities going forward, various activities will be carried out such as socializing about Marketing, Digital Marketing, utilization of social media, work motivation, enrichment of natural dyes and others.

Trademark Image Similarity Detection Using Convolutional Neural Network

A trademark is any recognizable sign that identifies products/services and distinguishes them from others. Many regional and international intellectual property offices are dedicated to dealing with trademark registration processes. The registration process involves examining the trademark to ensure there is no confusion or interference similarity to any other prior registered trademark. Due to the increasing number of registered trademarks annually, the current manual examining approach is becoming insufficient and more susceptible to human error. As such, there is potential for machine learning applications and deep learning, in particular, to enhance the examination process by providing an automated image detection system to be used by the examiners to facilitate and improve the accuracy of the examination process. Therefore, this paper proposed a trademark similarity detection system using deep-learning techniques to extract image features automatically in order to retrieve a trademark based on shape similarity. Two pretrained convolutional neural networks (VGGNet and ResNet) were individually used to extract image features. Then, their performance was compared. Subsequently, the extracted features were used to calculate the similarity between a new trademark and each of those registered using the Euclidean distance. Thereafter, the system retrieved the most similar trademark to the query according to the smallest distances. As a result, the system achieved an average rank of 67,067.788, a normalized average rank of 0.0725, and a mean average precision of 0.774 on the Middle East Technical University dataset, which displays a promising application in detecting trademark similarity.

ПРАВОВА ОХОРОНА ЗАГАЛЬНОВІДОМИХ ТОРГОВЕЛЬНИХ МАРОК

This article analyzes well-known trademarks, which by their nature receive broader legal protection than ordinary trademarks. Due to significant financial investments, wide promotion, and recognition among consumers of goods or services under certain trademarks, some of such brands can become recognizable on the territory where they were originally used, as well as in other countries. Such trademarks are called commonly known marks and can be conventionally divided into well-known, famous and with reputation. The article pays special attention to the identification of each definition and the distinction between them. Certainly, such trademarks become objects of unfair competition, as third parties, without financial investment, use them in their activities, making a profit and damaging the reputation and quality of commonly known trademarks. The infringement could be a reproduction or imitation of a trademark, which indicates an associative connection with the image or semantics of a commonly known trademark used for marking homogeneous goods. This could be using an identical or similar trademark for dissimilar goods and services, or perhaps an identical or similar trademark for homogeneous goods and services, but in a different country. Therefore, to prevent the illegal and unfair use of commonly known trademarks, special protection has been established by international regulations. Accordingly, the article examines the background of well-known trademarks, famous trademarks and trademarks with a reputation and analyzes the international and national legislation governing this issue. The article also analyzes the legal protection of such categories as wellknown trademarks, famous trademarks and trademarks with reputation, their legal nature, the order of recognition.

Trademark infringement recognition assistance system based on human visual Gestalt psychology and trademark design

Trademarks are common graphic signs in human society. People used this kind of graphic sign to distinguish the signs of representative significance such as individuals, organizations, countries, and groups. Under effective use, these graphic signs can bring maintenance and development resources and profits to the owner. In addition to maintenance and development, organizations that have obtained resources can further promote national and social progress. However, the benefits of these resources have also attracted the attention of unfair competitors. By imitating counterfeit trademarks that appear, unfair competitors can steal the resources of the original trademark. In order to prevent such acts of unfair competitors, the state has formulated laws to protect trademarks. In the past, there have also been researches on similar trademark searches to assist in trademark protection. Although the original trademark is protected by national laws, unfair competitors have recently used psychological methods to counterfeit the original trademark and steal its resources. Trademarks counterfeited through psychology have the characteristics of confuse consumers and do not constitute infringement under the law. Under the influence of such counterfeit trademarks, the original trademark is still not well protected. In order to effectively prevent such trademark counterfeiting through psychology, this article proposes new features based on trademark design and Gestalt psychology to assist legal judgments. These features correspond to a part of the process that is not fully understood in the human visual system and quantify them. In the experimental results, we used past cases to analyze the proposed assistance system. Discussions based on past judgments proved that the quantitative results of the proposed system are similar to the plaintiff or the judgment to determine the reasons for plagiarism. This result shows that the assistance system proposed in this article can provide visually effective quantitative data, assist the law to prevent malicious plagiarism on images by unfair competitors, and reduce the plagiarism caused by the similar design concepts of late trademark designers.

Protection of trade marks: types and regulation

This article is devoted to the consideration of contemporary types of trademarks. The legislation of the Russian Federation and international agreements provide for different approaches to determining the protectability of trademarks. The article includes the classification of trademarks by the form of expression, by the number of subjects and the division of marks into ordinary and well-known. The article analyzes the norms of international agreements and national legislation on the protection of trademarks. It should be noted that in recent years there has been an increase in new non-traditional trademarks. Three-dimensional, sound, light and other equally interesting signs can be noted as examples of non-traditional marks. Nevertheless, unscrupulous competitors register similar, confusingly similar trademarks, cause confusion among consumers about products, create an illusion about the high quality of the product being produced, imitate and imitate images of the desired trademark. And there are many examples. Judicial practice on the violation of trademark rights confirms this. It is important to emphasize that the emergence of new types of trademarks promotes business development and competition. Bona fide copyright holders will register new, different from other trademarks, which, possibly, over time will establish themselves in the market.

Protection of a Famous Person’s Surname in the Light of the European Union Trade Mark Regulation

Purpose: The main goal of the paper is to analyse the possibilities and rules of management of the protection of a famous person’s surname based on the provisions of the Regulation 2017/1001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2017 on the European Union trade mark (EUTMR). Moreover, the author aims at exploring whether the general principles of European Union trade marks protection are modified in view of the relation between a trade mark and a famous person in the case of the conflict between a trade mark containing a famous person’s surname and a similar trade mark of another person. Design/Methodology/Approach: The author analyses and interprets legal provisions of EUTMR and a variety cases concerning the problem of a famous person’s surname protection based on the EUTMR provisions. Findings: A specific theory of a trade mark neutralization is applied in the case of a conflict between a trade mark containing a famous person’s surname and a similar trade mark of another person. Furthermore, in such a conflict the general rule formulated by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the SABEL case (“the more distinctive the earlier mark, the greater will be the likelihood of confusion”) tends to be modified by CJEU. Practical Implications: The paper is addressed to both lawyers dealing with the protection of intangible assets (particularly personal names and trade marks) and managers of famous persons. Originality/Value: The article contains a comprehensive analysis of the subject matter. The possibilities and principles of protection of a famous person’s surname on the ground of the EUTMR are discussed in the context of specific cases, including the latest ones, to enable the author to detect the specific approach to the matter that tends to be applied by the courts.

The Place of Forensic Linguistics in the Resolution of Trademark Conflicts: Case of DOUBLEMINT & DOUBIEMLNT

Forensic linguistics focusing on word choice and spelling, it can be useful while resolving language crime, trademark infringement, and so forth. In our days, trademarks are one of the most infringed intellectual properties in the world in terms of values. Trademark could be a single word, a combination of words and symbols, design, or logo that distinguishes a company or products from others in the industry. When someone acquires a registered trademark, he is granted an exclusive right to its usage and it strongly prohibits other organizations from using it. This paper shows the way an expert in Forensic Linguistics should use his skill and knowledge to handle the conflict among similar trademarks. From brand name (how it is written, upper-cases or lower-cases, how many letters make this brand name, how it sounds, how it looks like, and so forth) to logo (design, usage of colors, sharp and so forth). The expert in Forensic Linguistics will try to find out scientific evidence that may help judges in decision-making. The present study scrutinized the place of forensic linguistics in the resolution of trademark conflicts, the scientific techniques, and methodologies utilized to analyze the similarities and differences between the trademarks in conflict. This research showed the importance of associating an expert in Forensic Linguistics in the Community Trademark conflicts in order to come up with a conclusion based on scientific evidence; the place of forensic linguistics and other related disciplines in revolving the issues of trademark infringement.

A shape and texture features fusion to retrieve similar Trademark Image Material

Trademark images or materials such as symbols, text, logos, image, design or phrase are used to unique representation of any organization. Retrieval of trademark material images are important to protect the new trademark image that is to be registered. Therefore, retrieval of similar trademark images is required. In this paper, an approach is presented to extract more similar trademark images so that a unique trademark image can be registered. In this paper, Zernike moment of the query image and dataset images are computed, then most similar images from the dataset are retrieved at the first layer refinement. In the second layer, texture features are extracted of query image and refined dataset images to retrieve most appropriate similar images. Zernike moments is applied to extract global shape features and Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) and Speeded-Up Robust Feature (SURF) are applied to extract texture features on the basis of a few key-points of the trademark images. A weighted average of both the key-points feature vectors is computed for retrieving the rank1, rank5, rank10, rank15 and rank20 most similar images using Euclidean distance. Experiments have been performed on a proposed dataset to perform the analysis and found that proposed work perform better and improves the accuracy.

Defences to the Invalidation and Infringement of Trade Marks: From Preclusion Due to Acquiescence to Preclusion Due to Coexistence

Trade mark coexistence is a situation in which two different parties use a similar or identical trade mark to identify similar or identical products or services. It is covered by a specific regulation, Art. 9 Trade Mark Directive, as well as by the Court of Justice case-law, which contains the principle of preclusion due to coexistence. This article examines the circumstances required for applying these rules and the relations between them.