2021.02.25
Appeal decision report – “A3I” was allowed to be registered because it is unreasonable to say that it consists solely of a very simple and common mark
February 25, 2021
Noriko Yashiro
Appeal number | Rejection 2020-508 (JP Appl. No. 2018-130880) |
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Case summary | “A3I” is allowed to be registered because it is unreasonable to say that the applied-for trademark consists solely of a very simple and common mark. |
Date of decision | January 20, 2021 |
Demandant (Applicant) | DATADIRECT NETWORKS, INC. |
Trademark(s) |
Applied-for-trademark |
Designated Goods/Services and Class(es) |
Designated Goods/Services and Class of applied-for-trademark: High capacity data storage systems comprising blank electronic storage media; high capacity data storage systems comprising computer hardware and computer software for operating and managing the high capacity data storage systems in class 9 |
Judgement |
The applied-for-trademark consists of the letter string ”A3I”, a combination of one alphabetic uppercase character, one numeric character and one alphabetic uppercase character, arranged horizontally. The appeal examiners did not find that the letter string ”A3I” had been commonly used as a code or descriptor in the field of art, for example, to identify models or create product numbers. With the above in mind, it is unreasonable to say that the applied-for trademark consists solely of a very simple and common mark. Thus, the refusal decision in the examination stage should be withdrawn. |
Comments |
The applicant argued that the applied-for-trademark should be registered because the following trademarks (combinations of one alphabetic character, one numeric character and one alphabetic character) have been registered in connection with the goods assigned to the same similarity codes (11B01 and/or 11C01) as this application, although the argument failed in examination stage: “L2M”, “D2C”, “R2R”, “W2P”, “M3i”, “C3S”, “M3D”, “N3D”, “A3D”, “P3C”, “P3T”, “F4E”, and “r4b” |