BMW AG
First of all, it has to be pointed out that according to the EU regulations for the local type-approval of vehicles, passenger cars, motor vehicles and busses are classified in the common “class M”. Therefore, the German Patent and Trademark Office considered the letter “M” for sports cars to be descriptive and rejected the word mark registration by BMW.
The Federal Patent Court revised this decision and allowed the registration. According to the opinion of the Federal Patent Court, the letter “M” is sufficiently distinctive and cannot automatically be assessed as descriptive information. With reference to the EU regulation, the Federal Patent Court pointed out that there, the “class M” as such was relevant. From the letter “M”, no automatic hint to the type-approval of “class M” arose automatically.
Author: Dipl.-Ing. Josef Bockhorni (Patent Attorney), Update 1/2013
Patent Attorneys and Lawyers Bockhorni & Kollegen
Munich/ Germany
www.patguard.de
