The Mark
Your clients wish to register this trade mark for a subscription service they are offering enabling subscribers to create an ‘a la carte’ television schedule for themselves by choosing their favourite shows and programmes originally created and broadcast by a variety of television companies. (Do not worry about any possible breach of copyright by your clients. You can assume they have licence arrangements in place with the original broadcasters of these shows/programmes).
You will be required to:
a. examine the rules regarding absolute grounds for refusal, and decide whether any of them are applicable here
b. decide which class or classes in the trade marks register would be most applicable to your client’s trade mark
c. conduct a thorough search of the database to look for the possibilities of conflicting
trade marks account the i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
already registered. In order to do this, ensure that you have taken into following:
any trade marks in the same class as the one you wish to register this trade mark in (see http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/tm/t-applying/t- class.htm for the list of classes)
any trade marks in similar classes to the one you wish to register this trade mark in (see http://www.ipo.gov.uk/t-class-cross-list.htm for a list of classes the IPO consider to be ‘similar’)
any trade marks which use a similar device (picture, design, etc) to yours but in other classes
the names of any competing companies in the same class as the one you are wishing to register in
d. if there is a
grounds for refusal is causing the problem, e.g.
conflict, explain what the problem is, and which part of the relative
Identical mark, identical goods
Identical mark, similar goods, likelihood of confusion
Similar mark, identical/similar goods, likelihood of confusion
Identical/similar mark, with a reputation
All of the above should be considered along with an explanation of relevant law
Writing your report
You will need to discuss your findings from the above points in your report. Write a report, no longer than 1000 words, which discusses whether this trade mark is registrable or not. Remember that your focus should be upon whether there are
