Recently, the German Supreme Court together in a trademark opposition case that copy paper and print media does not constitute a similar commodity.
In this case the applicant in the print media "goods registered trademark" ZOOM ", others were registered in the" citation copying paper "on the trademark" ZOOM "successful objection, the German Patent and Trademark Office objection to be cited trademarks and trademarks used on similar products existing in the relevant public the same trademark, the possibility of confusion on the grounds determination of the trademark in question shall not be registered. Applicant appeals to German patent court. The judgment of the first instance rejected the objection. The opposition appealed to the Supreme Court of germany.
In July 3, 2014, the German Supreme Court made the I ZB 77/13 decision, think of all the elements related to judge whether the goods of similar goods we should consider the dispute of goods, especially the nature, purpose or usage of goods, whether the dispute led to goods competing or complement each other, if the relevant public goods from the same dispute that an associated enterprise or economic dispute, is the commodity structure of similar commodities. The Supreme Court considered the case of copy paper and print media are not similar, consumers do not think the copy paper manufacturers would also publish the print media, in addition, the consumer is buying content relationship in the print media, but just a blank sheet of paper copy paper. And between print and copy paper is not a functional connection, namely the use of copy paper is limited to the scope of the cited trademark protected by copy, only copy paper, not general paper; print media is usually not printed on paper copy, print media copy is not complete, but by the consumer from the publisher. Based on the above reasons, the German Supreme Court decided the dispute does not constitute a similar commodity goods, and the ruling upheld the court's decision to reject the objection.