Non-traditional trademarks, marketing is a powerful ally!

While it is customary for legal teams to file trademarks to ensure the durability of marketing efforts and investments when launching and commercializing new products and services, lawyers, do not forget that marketing is also your ally! And it has not finished being proven.

Paris, October 25th, 2018 – While it is customary for legal teams to file trademarks to ensure the durability of marketing efforts and investments when launching and commercializing new products and services, lawyers, do not forget that marketing is also your ally! And it has not finished being proven.

Following today’s adoption of the “Trademark package”, in the European Union and tomorrow’s adoption in France, new horizons are opening up, allowing you to be more and more creative.

Indeed, the graphical representation requirement for a sign to be able to constitute a trademark, historically necessary, no longer applies.

This opens the door to “non-conventional” trademarks such as sound trademarks, movement trademarks, and multimedia trademarks that can be deposited in a digital format (MP3, MP4).
Olfactory trademarks are theoretically acceptable, but technical constraints for precise, self-contained, accessible, intelligible, durable and objective representation remain to date. Let’s trust in creativity, it will eventually be possible!

It will, however, be necessary to overcome hurdles to allow these non-conventional trademarks to make their place in our daily lives, and this is where marketing must come into play.

Regarding the consumer: Some consider that consumers will have difficulty perceiving a sound, an animated sequence as a trademark. Help them!

Communicate on the fact that this is a distinctive sign that allows them to make a connection between the sound and the trademark – go wild with your communication!

Today, we already associate the INTEL trademark with a jingle that sounds on the opening of a computer mentioning “INTEL INSIDE”. We visualize shapely legs of a pantyhose when we hear music of the DIM company. So why not have clothing stores in which an enthusiastic “moo” sounds upon entry?

For smells, a glue smelling of almonds triggers nostalgia, so why not bank branches that smell of fresh bread or roses?

Regarding the law: The same constraints of distinctiveness and of necessity of use exist, but specific problems will also arise since these trademarks will not necessarily be perceived as trademarks and no longer need to be graphically represented.

How to justify that the distinctive character of a sound is acquired through use?

Marketing may be the key, by playing on communication. Indeed, marketing teams already have experience with color or position trademarks. Consumer surveys could consolidate these investments…

How to prove that a trademark is exploited and shall not be revoked?

Legal and marketing teams must work together to build this evidence, to precisely define advertising campaign details including invoices and exchanges with communication agencies. Reporting may be regularly organized, the blockchain could be a new option…

Feel free to take advantage of these new options – be creative!

Nonetheless, secure these new projects as much as possible. No one knows which criteria will be applied tomorrow by the Offices and the Courts. But in light of what has already been done for more classic trademarks, why not start preparing the ground as of now?

Our firm is available to advise and assist you in building records and training your legal and marketing teams to these new trademarks.

The Sky may be the limit!

Published by

Martine Bloch-Weill

Associée gérante