Conferred Rights
The owner of a trademark cannot legally defend his mark against infringements. In order to do so, the trademark must either be registered, or have been used for a period of time so that it has acquired local distinctiveness (Prior Rights).
The extent to which a trademark is defendable depends upon the similarity of the marks involved, the similarity of the products/services involved and whether the trademark has acquired distinctiveness.
A registered trademark is relatively simple to defend in a court of law. An unregistered mark relies on the law of passing off (where one party's goods or services are presented in a way that causes confusion between them and the goods or services of another party).
Rights have also been recently extended with regard to well-known marks.
The Trade Marks Act 1994 states that "a person infringes a registered trade mark if he uses in the course of trade a sign which is identical with the trade mark in relation to goods or services which are identical with those for which it is registered" (section 10(1) of the Act). A person may also infringe a registered trade mark where the sign is similar and the goods or services are similar to those for which the mark is registered and there is a likelihood of confusion on the part of the public as a result (section 10(2)).
A person also infringes a registered trade mark where a sign is identical but the goods are dissimilar if the trade mark has a reputation in the UK and its use takes unfair advantage of, or is detrimental to, the mark’s distinctive character or reputation (section 10(3)).
Read more about this topic: United Kingdom Trade Mark Law
Famous quotes containing the words conferred and/or rights:
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—Kenneth Baker (b. 1934)
“We live in a highly industrialized society and every member of the Black nation must be as academically and technologically developed as possible. To wage a revolution, we need competent teachers, doctors, nurses, electronics experts, chemists, biologists, physicists, political scientists, and so on and so forth. Black women sitting at home reading bedtime stories to their children are just not going to make it.”
—Frances Beale, African American feminist and civil rights activist. The Black Woman, ch. 14 (1970)