Under Romanian jurisprudence, it is compulsory first to initiate an action for invalidating a similar or identical subsequent trademark; only after this procedure is followed can infringement action be initiated.
Such jurisprudence was justified before May 2010 due to the provisions of the Romanian Law on Trademarks, which stipulate that the Romanian trademark office (OSIM) had to examine the trademark registration considering relative grounds.
Under the previous legislation, the above jurisprudence was grounded on the fact that the use of a trademark right, legally obtained, could not be limited, because a decision had been issued by a state authority after performing a complete examination of the trademark application. Therefore, the use of the subsequent trademark could be forbidden only subject to the issuance of a court decision invalidating the second trademark.
"Romanian trademark law provides that the owner of the previous trademark would not be entitled to invalidate the second trademark outside the statute limitations of five years."
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CTM, Romania Trademark Law, OSIM, Trademarks
