Japanese trademark law provides that trademarks by which consumers are unable to recognize the marked goods or services as those pertaining to a business of a particular person are
unregistrable.

The above-captioned trademark “59FIFTY” was rejected in the examination stage. The examiner asserted that the portion “59” is considered to be a code because numbers are used broadly to show size, product stock numbers and model numbers and the like and that the portion “FIFTY” is a common word to mean “50” in English so that “59FIFTY” has no distinctive characteristics as a whole.

The applicant filed an appeal of the rejection. The three appeal examiners judged that it is difficult to say that the trademark “59FIFTY” does not have distinctive characteristics even if numbers are used broadly to show size, product stock numbers and model numbers and the like. Thus, the trademark “59FIFTY” can substantially fulfill the requirement of distinctive character.