In the spirit of the approaching holidays, “Vostochnii express” (Eastern express) bank filed an interesting trade mark application. If a bank wants to use the adjectives originating from the words “holiday”, “Christmas” or “New Year” now, it has to acquire a licence from “Vostochnii express”. The licence can be granted for a year for the fee of 300,000 roubles (about $9930/€6800).

One of the banks that has been advertising its “Christmas Present” scheme, refused to acquire the licence and claimed that the registration of these common parlance words should not have taken place. However, Rospatent (the Federal office on intellectual property, patents and trade marks of the Russian Federation) confirmed that “Vostochnii express” applied correctly for the registration of the words in question in the banking and financial spheres only. Since the words are not usually related to products and services of the kind, the application did not contradict the legislation. Therefore, the registration was allowed.

Needless to say that most of the financial sector in Russia is not happy...

Full text of the article can be found here (in Russian)

"As proprietor and sole user of the state-recognised mineral spring Höllen Sprudel, Kohlensäurewerk Hölle, Dr. Fritz Wiede GmbH & Co., has, owing to the high inspection costs, no further interest in the protection of this name as a designation of origin under Regulation (EC) No 510/2006 (formerly Regulation (EEC) No 2081/92) since it enjoys adequate legal protection under the Mineral- und Tafelwasser Verordnung (Mineral and Table Water Ordinance)".

Ankerbräu Nördlingen GmbH & Co. KG in this instance is the applicant for cancellation, being the legal successor to the original applicant, Rieser Weizenbier GmbH, which merged with it in 1997. According to this document:  

"The applicant is no longer interested in protecting the name ‘Rieser Weizenbier’ for marketing reasons since, as they state, for the purposes of selling the product locally, indicating the name is not important because it is already well known there, whereas the name ‘Ries’ is not sufficiently well known for marketing beyond the region.

No justified interests opposing cancellation of the protected geographical indication have come to light.

There do not appear to have been any other users of the name ‘Rieser Weizenbier’ in the past apart from the applicant, i.e. Rieser Weizenbier GmbH.

Surveys conducted by the Swabian trade corporation and the association of private medium-sized breweries in Bavaria have also shown that no other breweries located in the Nördlinger Ries district are interested in using this geographical indication. Accordingly, those firms have not raised any objections to cancellation of the protection for the name ‘Rieser Weizenbier’. The same applies to the Bavarian State Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the Swabian chamber of commerce and industry and the Bavarian brewers association, which were also consulted by the trade mark department.

The assessment is also supported by the fact that the Nördlinger Ries district, to which the name ‘Rieser’ refers, is only a relatively small area and the designation of origin does not appear to be known outside the region".