Tesco unworried by trademark rebuke

Supermarket group Tesco has shrugged off its failure to register its signature blue dashes as a trademark.

The chain has had its attempts to trademark the dashes, used under each letter of the store’s name, rejected by the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO).

But, in a statement to WIPR, the UK-based company dismissed the rejection as “a preliminary stage of an ongoing process.”

The IPO said it rejected the application on the grounds that the sign was too simple.

It added that although customers may associate it with the supermarket, it was likely that they would need to see it underneath the word Tesco to make the connection.

Hearing officer Edward Smith said the dashes were “entirely dependent” on the word Tesco and represented punctuation rather than a recognisable symbol.

Michael Shaw, a partner and trademark attorney at the Manchester office of Marks & Clerk LLP, said it was not surprising to see the application rejected.

“A trademark must be capable of distinguishing the goods and/or services of the applicant from those of other traders—as such, it must serve as a guarantee of the commercial origin of those goods and/or services that the average consumer is able to recognise,” Shaw told WIPR.

“In so far as Tesco’s dashes are concerned, when viewed alone in isolation from the other elements of Tesco’s branding it is difficult to see how the average consumer could perceive the dashes as a guarantee that the goods and services in question are supplied by Tesco.”

To counteract the hearing officer’s claims, Tesco had used a survey which it said showed that customers associated the dashes with the retailer regardless of whether the word Tesco was used.

But Shaw said that only “highlighted the difficulties” with bringing survey-based evidence into proceedings.

“The fact that customers associate the dashes with Tesco does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that they recognise those dashes as a guarantee that Tesco is responsible for the goods and services supplied by reference to the mark,” he said.