On 25 July the Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court ruled in a case on whether the services rendered by the employee of a cleaning service company, which fell outside the scope of her main duties, amounted to genuine use of her employer’s trade mark.

The dispute involved the genuine use of the cleaning company’s VASILKA trade mark for "office functions" in Class 35. According to the Sofia City Administrative Court, the trade mark had not been sufficiently used by its owner and its registration was thus subject to revocation, as the Bulgarian Patent Office had previously decided. The company appealed, claiming that the services in class 35 had been rendered to a cosmetics company under a contract for office maintenance. According to an annex to the contract and a witness statement, it was established that -- apart from cleaning the offices -- the cleaning lady employed by the cleaning service company also acted as a receptionist, thus performing office functions.

The Supreme Administrative Court was unimpressed: the primary service agreed on by the parties was that of daily office maintenance. Any other services had only a supplementary character and had been provided on a casual basis. This did not amount to the genuine use of the VASILKA trade mark for office functions. Consequently, the Supreme Administrative Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the decision of the lower court.

Source: "Bulgarian Supreme Court Decides On Genuine Use Of ‘Vasilka’ Trademark", by Dimitar Batakliev, PETOSEVIC newsletter, October 2014