Surnames can be trademarks – European Court

The Legal Media Group reports the court ruled that surnames will have to be treated as trademarks and their registrability considered under the same criteria as any other trademarks. The ruling follows the refusal by the UK Trade Marks Registrar on May 11 2001 to register the surname Nichols as a trade mark, as applied for by the British company Nichols plc. The UK Registrar has in the past refused to register common surnames using as a criterion how common a surname was in the telephone directory. The Registrar said the surname Nichols, as well as its phonetic equivalents Nicholls and Nichol, was too common to distinguish a trader in the food and drinks market from others. On appeal, the High Court of England and Wales held that first applicants should not have an unfair advantage of a name over other owners of the same name. But the European Court has clarified that such a practice was not provided for under EU trademark law and that surnames could not be refused to protect other applicants. Full judgment online Full report in the Legal Media Group