ZAŠTITA SLOVA ŽIGOM U NEMAČKOM I EVROPSKOM PRAVU

Abstract

According to earlier German legal solutions and court practice, letters and groups of letters could not be registered as a trademark except when they were imposed on the market. This restrictive approach is abandoned in European regulations, which also applies on the new German legislation. In other words, the letters and groups of letters are, from the point of view of registration, equal to other marks. However, in relation to the determination of the risk of substitution, trademarks that protect letters show some specificity, since the similarity of the letters is determined only on the basis of visual observation. Trademarks that protect letters generally have normal marking power. However, when there is an additional graphic stylization in addition to the letters, it is considered that, due to the shortness of the basic marking, image differences are significantly higher in comparison with the usual trademarks in the word. It must be borne in mind that the graphic stylization of the letters cannot be attributed to a superfluous meaning, unless it is unusually noticeable.