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Okt 15, 2013
Tim Francis, K&L Gates, Australia
Jane Owen, K&L Gates, Australia
First published on www.lexology.com

All that's Gold Does not Glitter


Tim Francis, K&L Gates, Australia, Jane Owen, K&L Gates, Australia, First published on www.lexology.comA Federal Court decision, handed down this week, is a sage reminder of the danger of assuming that foreign language words are distinctive marks for the purpose of registration on the Australian Register of Trade Marks. In a case of competing coffee brands, the Full Federal Court ordered that long-standing trade mark registrations for ORO (meaning "gold" in Italian) and CINQUE STELLE (meaning "five stars" in Italian), each registered for coffee products, be cancelled for lack of distinctiveness. The rationale for this decision was that the marks were common Italian words descriptive of quality, and given the diverse cultural heritage of Australia, they were known in the coffee trade to be descriptive of the quality of coffee products. This was the case even though the trade mark owner had been using those words on its packaging for a significant period of time at the time they were cancelled.  read more