Abhandlungen

Expanding Range of Trademarks – A Comparative Study

Akira Ishikawa/Kimiko Yano

I.Introduction

II.Comparative Study

1.   Examples in the U.K.
2.   Examples in the Community Trade Mark
3.   Examples in the U.S.A.

III.The Current Situation in Japan

1.   The Concept of a Trademark
2.   The Current situation for protection of three-dimensional trademarks
3.   Examples

I.       Introduction

Although the most traditional arrangement of a trademark is a two-dimensional word mark, if a trademark consists of a word that is not a coined word, the meaning or connotation of the mark is often associated with the culture of the relevant country. Therefore, when a company seeks a new mark in advance of the launch of a worldwide business, a preliminary search is conducted in order to select the most suitable mark by taking into consideration the cultural background of each target country.

In addition to traditional trademarks, non-traditional trademarks such as three-dimensional trademarks, olfactory marks, color marks, sound marks or even movable trademarks have proliferated recently especially in e-commerce on the Internet. In fact, when we access the home page of a company, we can see a well-known trademark arranged in the three-dimensional way, rotating, shrinking and expanding, twinkling, etc. With such visual effects, the owner of the home page tries to catch the audience’s eyes instantly.

In e-commerce, the use of color to identify or “tag” products, packaging or advertising for consumer reference may perhaps make the strongest impression since marks that consist of a single color can have a practical advantage in today’s global economy due to the ability of color to overcome the language or cultural barriers faced by more traditional word marks. However, actually, not many countries have accepted marks consisting of a single color.

If irregular or non-traditional trademarks have the same functions of indicating the origin of goods or services, guaranteeing quality and advertising as the more traditional trademarks do, why can they not receive the same treatment and recognition? Are the traditional requirements for registration enough or are additional ones needed?

Under Japanese Trademark Law, three-dimensional trademarks as well as traditional two-dimensional trademarks are accepted since the revision of the Trademark Law, which took place in 1997. Some countries are more advanced and have accepted non-traditional trademark of other kinds.