Ferrari lost an interesting dispute regarding its registered European 3D trademark:
This mark was registered in classes 12, 25 and 28. It represents the famous Ferrari’s car model 250 GTO which was been in production in 1962.
Such car was been sold for more than 48 million dollars 2 years ago, which means that this is the most expensive car ever.
In the case at hand, another Italian company Ares Design filed an application for cancellation of the mark before the EUIPO based on lack of genuine use for the last 5 years.
The trademark was registered in 2008, more than 40 years after the car was been producing.
According to the law if trademark owner doesn’t use its trademark for a period of 5 consecutive years, the trademark can be canceled. The idea here is an unnecessary monopolization of terms and images to be prevented.
Ferrari submitted evidence for use of the trademark but only for toys in class 28.
For the rest of the classes, Ferrari claimed that although the car is not in production any more, there are still available cars from that model in the market which are sold on auctions from time to time.
The EUIPO agreed that there is genuine use of the mark for toys. For classes 12 and 25, however, the Office concluded that this was not the case. The main requirement is that trademark owner has to use the mark for production and labeling of goods which after that are offered in the market.
Due to the fact that this is not done by Ferrari now the trademark is not been used genuinely.
All of this means that this famous car design will be left without protection unless Ferrari proves that it is subject matter to copyright one because of its originality and uniqueness. There are such attempt in other similar cases like this with the Brompton Bicycle.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PLANET 