Artist to appeal against ‘Allah’ trademark rejection

The Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (BOIP) has provisionally rejected a Dutch artist’s application to trademark the name ‘Allah’, a decision that the artist’s legal representatives have confirmed he will be filing an objection to.

Teun Castelein submitted a request to register a logo, featuring the name in gothic black type upon a white background, for leather goods and clothing under classes 18, 25 and 26 of the Nice classification system on December 29 last year. On Monday, a document published on BOIP’s website said the mark had been provisionally rejected.

Castelein said he applied to register the mark as he wanted to investigate the boundaries of the free market. “I was amazed to learn that registering ‘Allah’ is indeed possible, as God is registered 86 times. For only €240, I almost became owner of 'Allah' in the fields of clothing and accessories,” he said.

The artist added that he did not intend to cause offense by submitting his application, but was demonstrating the fact that commerce can, in principle, monopolise religious and divine names.

“Unfortunately my act (in combination with the media attention) scared the Benelux Trademark Office that much they refused the registration,” he said.

Pieter Veeze, a lawyer at BOIP, said the mark had been rejected on the grounds that it was void of distinctive character and would not be perceived by people as a trademark. “If I wear a t-shirt saying ‘I love my Daddy’, people would not see that as a trademark—it is the same for Allah,” he said.

But Michiel Rijsdijk, a partner at Arnold + Siedsma in the Netherlands, said the decision was surprising as the name ‘Allah’, while commonplace in religious language, is not commonly used to describe goods in the classes under which Castelein attempted to register the mark and so could become distinctive.

“In view of the fact that BOIP did register the trademark JESUS for clothing (618251), and that the trademarks GOD, BUDDHA, AJAX and MEKKA are registered, this particular rejection is even more surprising,” he said.

Castelein now has three months to file an objection to BOIP’s decision and Arnaud Bos, a trademark attorney at Onel in the Netherlands, confirmed today that the firm is drafting a response to BOIP’s decision on the artist’s behalf.

“There are two aspects in this matter: whether or not, from a legal point of view, the trademark Allah is valid and whether or not people should apply for these kinds of trademarks,” said Bos.

“Our answer on the first question is clear: Allah should be a valid trademark as, despite of the general meaning, it has distinctive character for the products in the application (clothing etc.). We feel that the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market shares this view as it recently accepted the trademark Jesus for clothing. Nevertheless, we wonder whether a jeans brand named Allah would be a huge success.”