An interesting little article touching on the issue of geographic places as trade marks on the BBC news Wales site this afternoon (
here) begins “British supermarket Iceland could face a legal battle to save its name after the Icelandic government confirmed it is considering launching legal action”. The prompt to this appears to be complaints by Icelandic businesses that they are being prevented in using Iceland in their brand names or promotion by the EU wide trade mark registrations owned by Iceland Foods Limited. There are of course checks and balances around this issue in the trade mark legislation with practice around registration of geographic areas as well as their being certain statutory defences to trade mark infringement but it is the case that a registration can have a chilling effect even when the right may not be able to be enforced in a particular situation. The comment by the Business Iceland lawyer that “whether it is fair to be able to trademark the name of a country without its inhabitants having any say in the matter” is interesting especially as in this case the country (Iceland) in question is not in the EU (the territory of the registration). If you have any questions around this kind of trade mark issue please feel free to call.
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